By David Haerle
Grays Harbor News Group
Living history will take center stage at the Bishop Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday.
Singer-songwriter Carlene Carter, who hails from a family that is considered country music royalty, will open the center’s new season that night.
Carter, whose mom was the iconic June Carter Cash and grandparents were country music pioneers Ezra and Maybelle Carter, brings her show to town for a 7:30 p.m. performance.
She will be familiar to those who have been watching the eight-part Ken Burns documentary “Country Music” on PBS. The spotlight points squarely at her family as the beginning of what’s come to be called country music, and she is interviewed several times through the series.
”I cover a lot of ground,” Carter said of her performance in a Tuesday morning phone interview with The Daily World. “I tell a lot of stories. I incorporate Carter family music. Basically, I just entertain the hell out of them.”
She grew up in the family business and is in her 42nd year of recording albums and 45th year of touring, in a career that started when she hit the road to perform with her mom and stepfather, Johnny Cash.
“I was out with John and June when I was a teen,” said Carter, 63.
Her career includes co-writing songs for Emmylou Harris and the Doobie Brothers as well as her own hits in the 1990s such as “I Fell in Love,” “Come on Back” and “Every Little Thing.” Since 1978, she has recorded 12 albums, primarily on major labels. In the same time span, she has released more than 20 singles, including three No. 3-peaking hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts.
Carter said she is performing in a trio on this and upcoming tours of smaller venues across the nation.
“We only started to do this trio thing this year,” she said. “We’re hitting a lot of performing arts centers. They work really well for me. A lot of my fans are probably five or 10 years older than me — they need comfortable chairs.”
Carter, who grew up among bright lights and the big-time entertainment industry, comes across as very down-to-earth and quite the friendly extrovert over the phone. She has seen her life change in recent years, but not necessarily slow down. There’s just a lot on her plate.
“I’ve got my fingers in a lot of things and it’s starting to get messy, so I’m trying to juggle things a bit. I say ‘yes’ too much. I need to work on that,” she said with a laugh.
“I moved a year and a half ago to Nashville from California,” where she had lived for years. “I’m glad to be back in Tennessee,” where she resides close to her two children and six of her seven grandchildren, who range in age from 11 to 17.
“My car is called ‘Grandma’s Uber,’,” she said. “I had to get something big enough to pack them all into.”
Does she see her grandkids a lot?
“I try to,” she said, “but these days it’s often got to do with their schedules as much as mine,” as youth sports takes up a lot of time for the youngsters.
She’s also enjoying reconnecting with old friends, now that she’s living back in Nashville, where she spent her youth. “I recently moved into a new house, and it has a pool. I hang out with my dog and my friends.”
She lives near several of her childhood friends — “some I’ve known since I was 8 years old. It’s pretty neat. We get together and float in the water and solve all the world’s problems.”
While most country music fans are familiar with her roots, many are learning more about the Carter family and its place in history through Ken Burns’ “Country Music” series, which is currently showing on PBS stations nationwide.
Carter’s commentary and insights are a major part of the series.
“It was a wonderful, in-depth interview I did. It was at least a couple of hours,” she said, noting that it actually took place quite awhile ago. (The documentary series was years in the making.)
“It was a few years ago, before I turned 60,” she said. “They asked a lot of questions about Mom and John. It’s the story of the people who raised us.”
She has just started watching the series herself and still has “some catching up to do,” she said. But she’s amazed by some of the archived material that Burns and his crew dug up.
“It’s really cool they could find all this stuff,” she said. “I’ve learned a lot from it. I can’t wait to see how it ends up.”
That show and her 2014 album, “Carter Girl,” have her in a nostalgic mood when it comes to work and music these days.
“I’m trying to know more about my heritage and trying to carry it on,” she said. “The most natural thing I do is when I sing these old (Carter family) songs — just to come around back to the beginning again. People tell me I’ve come full circle, but I’ve come full circle about four times in my career, I think.”
She’s reflective when she talks about her years with her mother and Johnny Cash.
“My mom was a special individual, but they were also my folks. Stardom was just part of who they were — it was sort of seamless,” she said.
“As a kid, I used to garden and mow the grass, and then Mom married John … and suddenly we were bombarded by people at our gate. Things changed a lot, and suddenly we were dealing with a lot of attention we weren’t used to.”
She said the change in her early life really dawned on her when she saw June and Johnny perform at Madison Square Garden soon after their marriage in 1968.
“I realized, this is huge — this is gargantuan,” she said. “But I grew up around it, and it became a seamless part of my life — this was the family business.”
And she has no plans to step away from the family business anytime soon. She goes back on tour with her trio in a couple of months, and there’s more work to be done in the studio.
“I’m working on new songs for another record that will probably come out this time next year,” she said. “I try to stay as much in the moment as I can these days, while still managing an itinerary.”
All tickets for Saturday’s show are $25 and available at www.ghc.edu/bishop or 360-538-4066.
