Mary Chapin Carpenter

Purists love to act like Merle Haggard was the last cool thing to happen to country music,
but we lived through a golden age as recently as the early Nineties. Back then, Mary Chapin
Carpenter was Nashville's proudest oddity and most unexpected icon -- a New Jerseyite
with folkie roots, feminist leanings and a big, guilty boogie streak. Her ballads turned you to
mush; her good-time rockers weren't dumb. Women who would have sworn tha... More >