Food

We, being Southern, like our tried-and-true food dishes, as well as our local food suppliers. And so we put together a very traditional Thanksgiving dinner—with food almost totally sourced in Virginia—and then went looking for someone to host a quasi-intimate gathering. We could not have found a more gracious hostess than Mary Chapin Carpenter—the well-known singer and songwriter who lives in a charming, traditionally-styled farmhouse just outside of Charlottesville (with a fabulous view of the Blue Ridge Mountains) and who loves to cook and entertain for family and friends when she is not on the road, performing.

Carpenter grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, graduated from Brown University, lived with her family in Japan for a couple of years (her father worked for Life magazine) then spent more than 20 years in Washington, D.C. singing and playing guitar and piano before she was signed, in the 1980s, by Columbia Records. Her second album, 1989’s State of the Heart produced two country-music hits, and her third record, 1990’s, Shooting Straight in the Dark, featured one of her biggest career chart-toppers, “Down at the Twist and Shout.” Next came what would be her most successful album, Come On Come On, released in 1992. It went quadruple platinum—by which time the music industry had taken notice. Between 1991 and 1995, Carpenter won five Grammy awards, including four straight for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.

Carpenter, who was born in 1958, had a major health scare in 2007 when she suffered a pulmonary embolism. She recovered, but didn’t perform for about three years, during which time, she says, she felt “strangeness and fear and dislocation,” adding: “Everything came to a screeching halt.” The health problem, she reveals, “altered my existence, and you do have that sense of fear and hiding from the world and not knowing what will happen next.”

Happily, with improved health what came next was her 12th record, the just released and well-received Age of Miracles. Even better, she went on the road again to promote it. She spent last summer touring the United States and the fall performing in the United Kingdom. How was it? “It’s been fantastic,” Carpenter told me. “The audiences have been extraordinary—so welcoming and kind and generous. I was sitting with a friend the other day, and I didn’t know what to say except that I feel this intense gratitude. Being back at work means so much to me.”