‘All I wanted to be when I grew up was to be a Carter girl, and that’s how I named the album’, said Carlene Carter at Amoeba on Wednesday night. This could sum up everything or almost. The whole Carter family was almost on stage with her, so present in everything she was saying (and she was talking a lot) and in everything she was singing. She was talking about her grandmother Maybelle, her aunts Helen and Anita, her sister Rosie and of course her mother June, and if anyone wasn’t familiar with the family, they got introduced very fast. With a sort of Southern simplicity, Carlene was such at ease and so friendly while telling her stories, that I got the impression to have always known her. I have to say that, during some vacation in the south a long time ago, I met Johnny Cash’s mother at the ‘House of Cash’ museum, where she was working at the gift shop, and probably two decades ago I saw June Carter performing a free concert just like her daughter, except that it was inside the defunct Virgin Megastore at the time… I never had the chance to see Johnny Cash in concert but this family has been so present in the American mythology that Carlene was totally making sense to me when talking about all these people.
Now Carlene is certainly not a newcomer, she has recorded albums since the 70s, but her latest ‘Carter Girl’, a direct homage to the Carter family produced by Don Was, may be one of his most personal one. It seems she can’t escape her heritage and she gave testimony of this between songs, talking with a clear native Tennessee twang in the voice, telling us about being a represent of the Carter family’s third generation, about her life on the road when she was younger, about doing a duet with Willie Nelson, about living next door to Roy Orbison, or about Kris Kristofferson (her idea of ‘the perfect man’) landing in the Cash family’s backyard in helicopter. You can’t make it up such stories and Carlene’s life seems to have been an interesting one, she is a legend, or at least part of the American legend and she is well aware of it, without overdoing it.
At Amoeba, with the only help of her acoustic guitar and strong smoky voice, she played most of the songs alone, songs such as ‘Little Black Train’, Give Me The Roses’ – a song about how she wants to live her life, she added, ‘give me the roses while I am alive’. But, she was also joined on stage by Peter Andrews for ‘Blackie’s Gunman’ (a duet with her good friend Elizabeth Cook on the album), and by her husband Joe Breen who harmonized on the last song ‘Lonesome Valley 2003’. She was then behind the keyboard explaining that the song was written for her mother June but it could have also been an homage to her sister Rosie, or stepfather Johnny Cash who all passed away this same year of 2003. ‘Lonesome Valley’ has been sang by many others before, but Carlene rearranged the song with her own lyrics about deaths and family affairs and made the song hers.
Her last album is an album of Carter songs with only two original ones, and she explained that Don Was help her trust herself, while picking only 12 songs among tons of others. The choice was extremely difficult she seemed to let us know, but above everything she wanted to honor her mother June as well as her aunts. The songs she played weren’t greatest hits, I don’t think I really knew any of them, but the fierce Carter spirit, country, bluesy, feisty, with these close-to-a-cappella parts was present all along.
She talked more about her aunt Helen and what a great songwriter she was before singing ‘Poor Ole Heartsick Me’, and mentioned again Kris Kristofferson before singing ‘Blackjack David’ – he is a guest star on the album as well as Willie Nelson, Vince Gill and others.
The public at Amoeba was understandably a bit older than usually, and I was observing from time to time a man with a long white beard who was listening very religiously, all eyes for Carlene and all ears for her updated versions. When Carlene said that ‘Give me the Roses’ was for her sister Rosie, I could tell that the man had tears in his eyes, and it was a very touching moment. I discretely looked at him during ‘Lonesome Valley 2003’ and he looked even more affected by the gospelic song… ‘Well, I hope you had fun tonight?’ said jovial Carlene after the end of the tune, yeah she was not ready to let all this dying and nostalgia sprawling all over her songs, kill her amiable and buoyant personality! Carlene is a happy girl, a Carter girl before anything else, and at 58, she has re-embraced her country royalty roots and feels as strong as ever.
