Available Light Album Profile - The Beautiful Not Yet

Within Us and Between Us: Song, Spirit, and a Gritty Kind of Hope Come Together on Carrie Newcomer’s The Beautiful Not Yet. New album from the celebrated singer-songwriter produced by Jayme Stone, and extensive autumn 2016 tour. "We live in an ever accelerating world where we are not encouraged to stop, reflect or pause the perpetual motion of our lives,” singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer remarks. Yet, Newcomer invites us to do just that in her newest recording, The Beautiful Not Yet. On The Beautiful Not Yet (release: September 16, 2016),

Newcomer continues her inquiry into how life's deepest questions show up in our daily lives and explores how we might live more present, engaged lives, even in the face of division, uncertainty, or heartbreak. “I’ve always been more intrigued by good questions than easy answers questions like, what do I love beyond words or measure, what sustains and connects us?” she asks. “Where do we find help in hard times, how can I be more present in my daily life, and when I stop and pull back the layers of distraction, what is at the very heart of my life?” Newcomer joined forces with producer and banjo virtuoso Jayme Stone (Lomax Project) to create The Beautiful Not Yet. It is a collection of joyous, earthy songs featuring elegantly layered chamber/roots arrangements, Newcomer’s signature warm, intimate vocals, filled with the ache and awe of human experience. Many of the songs on The Beautiful Not Yet were created in conversation with beloved author Parker J. Palmer (Let Your Life Speak, Healing the Heart of Democracy), as part of a collaborative spoken word/music piece, What We Need Is Here: Hope, Hard Times and the Human Possibility, that imagines a human-scale approach to addressing and responding to what is happening in our world by reorienting our focus from an outer world that feels invincible and overwhelming to the inner powers of the human heart. Newcomer explains, “The things that have always saved us personally and as a community are still here to save us; compassion, kindness, empathy, generosity, a sense of humor, decency, faithfulness and good parenting are all still here. Yes, the things that have always tripped us up–greed, racism, tribalism, unchecked commercialism, and violence—are also still here, and so we name and contend with these things as well. But too often we look ‘out there’ for solutions, when what we really need is right here, within us and between us.” {full story below} The creative collaboration between Newcomer and Stone began with long discussions about what was at the heart of the music, how to remain true to what was elemental to the songs and yet expand Newcomer’s musical edges. A multi-generational group of musicians (Natalie Haas, Sumaia Jackson, Joe Phillips, Moira Smiley, Jordan Tice, Gary Walters, Krista Detor and Chloe Grace) were invited to create a richly layered ensemble of chamber and American roots instruments.

“It was such a lovely experience to meet and work with this collection of amazing musicians. We gathered for days at my home in the woods of southern Indiana to rehearse. We sat on my front porch sharing meals and telling stories about our lives and work. The entire process had a wonderful family-like quality to it,” Newcomer recounts. “When we moved into the studio, there was a beautiful musical and personal synergy that happened. It felt very magical.” A similar unpretentious alchemy lies in the songs themselves. Often drawing upon images from the natural world, Newcomer writes about captured suspended moments (“The Beautiful Not Yet” and “The Season of Mercy”). She reframes what might be called a prayer with images of a baby that has finally fallen asleep (“A Shovel is a Prayer”) and describes learning to see something extraordinary in what seems absolutely ordinary (“Where the Light Comes Down”). She offers a plainspoken love song, picturing a tender moment of calm amid life’s ceaseless winds (“Cedar Rapids 10 AM” and “Sanctuary”) and traces the tug of the invisible thread from one heart to another (“The Slender Thread”). The captured moments she describes may be jubilant (the fiddle-rich “Three Feet or So,” inspired by a story by Greg Ellison) or bittersweet (“Haunted,” touching on the complex resonances of our past). Yet Newcomer moves through the interplay of shadows and light that make up our daily experience with remarkable skill and care. Her deliberation, like her contralto voice, never feels stilted, but remains conversational and poignant. Many of the songs featured on The Beautiful Not Yet were created in dialog with Parker J. Palmer for their spoken word and music collaboration, What We Need Is Here: Hope, Hard Times and the Human Possibility. This new show is a perfect follow up to their 2012-16 collaboration, Healing the Heart of Democracy: A Gathering of Spirits for the Common that aired July 4, 2016 on Wisconsin Public Broadcasting and focused upon a new kind of political conversation. The songs “Sanctuary,” “Three Feet or So,” “Help in Hard Times,” “A Shovel is a Prayer,” “Lean in Toward the Light” and “You Can Do This Hard Thing” exemplify the themes of this fascinating meeting of author and songwriter, music and spoken word, exploring where hope is personally found and how hope is sustained and activated by community. In songs like “Lean in Toward the Light” she envisions a different kind of hope, one that’s resolute and grounded. Newcomer describes hope as, “Hope is not gossamer, it is not wishful or positive thinking. Hope is daily and gritty. We choose to get up in the morning and try again, in our own way, to make the world just a little kinder place, and then the next day we get up and do it again. When inevitably our hearts are broken, we get up and do it again. When we live in heartbreaking times personally or politically, hope is risky business. It is tender and gritty and ultimately faithful.” Newcomer has been described as a “prairie mystic” by the Boston Globe, Rolling Stone wrote that she “asks all the right questions,” and her ability for sharp observation of the world led the Dallas Morning News to rave, “She’s the kind of artist whose music makes you stop, think and then say, ‘that is so true.’” As a result of this thoughtful approach to the paths of the spirit and the soul, Newcomer has emerged in recent years as a prominent voice for progressive spirituality, interfaith dialogue and social justice. A contemplative Quaker, Newcomer states, “I’m one of a growing number of people who choose to not put the Sacred in such a small container.” Though her striking literary penchant peaks out of every line, it’s the interplay of language and music that inspires Newcomer. “There’s a reason why I’m drawn to songwriting,” she explains. “There is something powerful that happens when poetic language, comes together with music. Everything the song is saying

lyrically is backed up and enhanced by what the song is doing musically. I’m always striving for a perfect entwining of all the elements.” In describing this entwining within the context of The Beautiful Not Yet, Newcomer relates, “This collaboration felt like the next logical progression in a sound that I’ve been leaning into for quite some time. The integration of chamber and American roots instruments into songs that have extremely focused lyrical content felt like a wonderful leap in the right direction.” Newcomer muses, “I’ve never fit neatly into any one musical niche. I love music that pushes the edges of its genre - and this album does.” Newcomer’s songwriting has impressed the likes of Billboard, Rolling Stone, USA Today and has recently been featured on PBS’s Religion and Ethics and Krista Tippett’s On Being. Newcomer’s song “I Should’ve Known Better” appeared on This Side, Nickel Creek’s 2003 Grammy-winning album. Newcomer also speaks and teaches about creativity, vocation, activism and spirituality in college classrooms, conventions and retreats. She has shared the stage with performers like Alison Krauss and writers like Parker J. Palmer, Jill Bolte Taylor, Philip Gulley, Scott Russell Sanders, Rabbi Sandy Sasso and Barbara Kingsolver. She has written two collections of essays and poetry as companion pieces to recent albums (A Permeable Life: Poems and Essays, and The Beautiful Not Yet: Poems and Essays). In 2015, Purdue University produced Newcomer’s musical, Betty’s Diner: The Musical to rave reviews and a sold out run. In 2016, Goshen College awarded Newcomer with an honorary degree of Bachelor’s of Music in Social Change during a ceremony in which she delivered the college’s commencement speech.