(This article is from the archives of Baby Ride Easy, the Carlene Carter fan site run by Doug Stalnaker 2003-2008.)
It was a question asked for over a year: What happened to Carlene Carter?
Although she had been recording since the late 1970s, she returned to her roots in 1991 and found resounding success in the country music fold. Her exuberant performing skills, dead-on twang, and neo-traditional music were found on cuts like I Fell In Love and Big Love.
Then just as suddenly as she had made waves, the water was unsettlingly still.
Carlene was holed up in California, writing for and working on her "Little Love Letters" album. Though time kept slipping away, she refused to let pressures of time forsake the quality she sought for this follow-up album.
"I think that people remember if you make a flop," she says with a steady gaze. "So if I'd put out a record quickly and it was a bad record, they are going to remember me for having a bad record. Once you put it out, it is forever.
You can't go back and change something once you put it out. It has to stand the test of time. Quality is a big thing to me. I really wanted it to be a lot better than the last album."
She is all too aware of the constant, nagging question of "Where've you been?" and counters with "in the studio." Working with boyfirend/producer Howie Epstein for a second time, they worked solidly for a year-and-a-half getting it all together. She praises Epstein for his constant prodding and admonitions that she was good, but could do a lot better.
"Howie has had a big influence on me in keeping me focused and striving to do better and not settling for what just comes out of me," she tells. "I've never been a complete over-achiever and I needed some prodding over the years that I've never gotten before. "We spent a lot of time working on this and we took our time, too," Carlene says. "We didn't kill ourselves working, but we worked every day. We were threatened with, 'You are going to be forgotten. No one is going to remember you. You've lost all your momentum, and you'll have to start over again.' I was like, 'Hey, I don't care,' I look at it like every album you start over again. Creativity comes out and it should be judged as brand new and not as what you did last time."
What Carlene Carter did this time was write a batch of songs that reflect a new-found maturity and clear-sightedness. She admits to being older and wiser and that is reflected in songs like Nowhere Train and Hallelujah In My Heart. Yet her sassy, flashy side comes through on songs like the first single, Every Little Thing. The album contains over 12 songs, 14 if you count the two Love Letters segues.
"They don't like for you do that and as an artist and a writer, I suffer for that," she explains about the standard norm of having 10 cuts per album. "I just think value for money. Each song needs to be there for the whole thing to work. It said everything I wanted to say. If I would have left anything off, I would have missed."
One thing was left off, quite deliberately, and that was a long-dicussed duet recording with her father, Carl Smith. Once again, if it's not quality, don't expect it to come from this family.
"Finding a father and daughter duet is pretty hard," she explains. "I wrote three songs and elbowed them all three out; they weren't good enough. I got outside material and it was corny. We could have done a remake of one of his hits, but that would have been an easy shot.
"I want it to be real special, to be something I can say to him and he can say to me. I just haven't found the right song yet for my dad to come out of retirement. He refused to do any sappy songs. He wants to rock out. I still want to do it, but I just have to find the right tune."
However, she did do a song with her mother June Carter Cash and aunts Helen and Anita titled Winding Stream, an old Carter Family song. Although the recording is complete, it didn't make the album due to the fact it didn't fit the theme.
Carlene Carter's blue-stock musical bloodline makes a double edged sword. Earlier in her life some things came to easily for her and she gallivanted from continent to continent and from musical style to musical style. Now she has come to appreciate her background and has nested back into country. her "older but wiser" mindset has led to changes in her life.
"I decided to make a commitment to take care of myself and stop all the partying and hanging out and get serious about living my life. I'd been missing out. Earlier in my career, I never thought about this kind of thing. I guess it is sort of like I'm realizing my mortality. I don't have that frivolous attitude I had in my early twenties when I had everything handed to me on a plate.
"I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to express myself in public and have people hear what I do. I take it a lot more seriously as a craft. I consider myself to be an entertainer, but I really want to pick and choose what I do carefully from now on because I don't want to spend my life in the back of a bus. Life is to be lived and I want to write songs. I don't seem to be as creative as I ought to be when I'm touring."
While she will tour to support her album, it won't be the only thing she does. She likes to make videos, she likes to do TV and make records--all of which she will approach with quality in mind.
"I'd like to know that ten years from now someone will put this record on and still love it."
Lydia Dixon Harden - Music City News (1993)