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SHY?

The classroom rang with children’s voices under teacher’s watchful eye

It only took a minute for my finger to find my daily dose of destiny under my sign

When it seems so black outside that you can’t remember light

You got me walking through fire

Don’t worry ’bout the details darlin’, you’ve got the kind of mind I love to read

When I was ten my father held me on his shoulders above the crowd

I’m the language of the natives, I’m a cadence and a drawl

No tropical depression’s gonna steal my sun away

It’s hard to believe that popular singer/songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter was a shy kid who had a hard time making friends. But that’s how she remembers herself.

“I spent a lot of time alone in my room writing songs and singing – it was kind of an escape hatch,” she says.

Mary Chapin has lived most of her life outside Washington, D.C. While she was growing up, the two most important things in her life were sports and music.

“I was a figure skater for many years, and that was a big thing in my life,” she says.

At 16, when Mary Chapin realized that she just wasn’t good enough to skate professionally, she started spending more time playing her guitar.

“I loved it,” she recalls. “It was just a real big part of my world.”

From rollicking country to soulful folk, Mary Chapin’s music is hard to categorize. “It doesn’t really fit neatly into the categories we’ve established for contemporary music,” she says. “A friend of mine calls it Tslash music’: It’s folk/pop/country.”

Mary Chapin, 36, is admired for the cool lyrics she writes. You may know some of her songs, like “Walking Through Fire,” “I Feel Lucky” (she co-wrote that) and “Shut Up and Kiss Me.” With five albums and three Grammy awards, she says success didn’t come easy. It took hard work, patience, passion for her work – and some luck, too. “When I hear people say that luck has nothing to do with success, I want to shake them,” she says. “I think they need to take a humble pill at that point.”

When she’s not touring, Mary Chapin spends time at her home near Washington, D.C., writing more songs, playing with her dog, hiking and reading. Her ideal Satur-day afternoon? “To hit a great bookstore and just spend hours browsing,” she says.

Even though she’s a superstar, there is still some of that shy kid inside her. The toughest part of the job for her is dealing with stage fright. But she doesn’t like to talk about that.

“It’s this thing that I struggle with, but I work real hard to minimize it,” she says. “The less I talk about it, the less it’s an issue for me. That’s how my brain works.”

For Mary Chapin, the best things about her job are the people she meets and the fan mail.

“The absolute treasures of letters I get would blow your mind,” she says. “I can’t respond to every letter, but if I could, I would want them to know that they give me this gift I can’t possibly repay.”

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Sorry, Mary Chapin fans – there’s no official MCC fan club. But here’s a number to update you on what she’s up to (with tours, awards, etc.): 301-891-2MCC.