Mary Chapin Carpenter relishes ‘best of both worlds’

Singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter broke into the mainstream in the early ’90s, with a roster of country radio hits that included “Passionate Kisses,” “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her” and “I Feel Lucky.”

But Carpenter is more than just a collection of country pop singles. She’s dabbled in rock, introspective folk and orchestral music, and her latest tour brings her to the Bing Crosby Theater on Monday. Carpenter, who’s touring behind her new album “The Things That We Are Made Of,” talked with The Spokesman-Review about her tour schedule, her place in the country music scene and how her career has developed over the years.

The Spokesman-Review: Are you touring a lot these days?

Mary Chapin Carpenter: Yeah. If you’ve had a chance to look at our schedule, you can see we’ve been slingshotting it around the globe. … It’s great, because I’m a musician, so I like the idea that I’m playing music. It’s a lot of travel, but it’s good. … I’m with my posse. I love my band. I love my crewmates. There’s a reason you think of them as your road family, because you’re together. I live out in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia in a really isolated place, so I don’t see a lot of people when I’m home. I do feel like I have the best of both worlds: I have my home time, and then I get to go out into the world with these great folks and draw out good emotions from that.

SR: Your career first took off during the ’90s pop-country boom. Did you ever feel pigeonholed by the genre?

Carpenter: Oh, gosh, no. When I got a record deal out of Nashville, I’d never even been to Nashville. I didn’t have a sense that there was something unusual about it, other than I was just so astounded. It was a different time. But to get a major label record deal, to me it was like, “Are you joking?” But looking back at it, and I’ve certainly had the opportunity to do that, the only way it makes any sort of sense is that I found myself in a place where a lot of different artists fit under this umbrella of country music. … There were a few times that I would say I didn’t feel like I fit in, but that had not so much to do with being considered an artist in country music as what went into mainstream music – consultants and research and things like that, the arbitrary decisions that were important to the business of it. I was allergic to it then, and I’m allergic to it now, but it doesn’t matter as much anymore.

Nowadays, after all these years, I feel just euphoric that I get to make records still and I get to tour the world, and I’m doing what I want to do and making records I’m really proud of. And it’s sort of nice to feel like it hasn’t really mattered, the genre business.

SR: I’m sure that as your career is actually happening, you’re not really thinking about it as much.

Carpenter: No, you’re not. You’re right.

SR: But looking back on it now, would you say that your sound or your songwriting has developed or changed in any significant ways?

Carpenter: I hope it has developed. I was listening to this really great interview yesterday with Ann Patchett, the author, and she said something that resonated with me, even though our mediums are obviously quite different. She said something to the effect of – and I’m paraphrasing – that each novel she’s written has felt like it’s led to the next one. And that resonated with me. I feel like every record I’ve made has led to the next one. But hopefully, at the same time, I’ve become a better songwriter with each record. I mean, I want to be as good a songwriter as I can be. I love to play music live, but I also love what happens before any of that happens, which is to sit at my kitchen table and to write. Nothing brings me more happiness than that.

SR: Is there anything you haven’t done yet that you’d be interested in? Any other genres you’d like to take a crack at?

Carpenter: I would love to do more collaborations with artists. You learn so much when you’re working side by side with people and you’re inspired. I feel like what I do has a large amount of solitude involved in it, and so it’s sort of the antidote to that. You find yourself sometimes really hungry for that antidote.