Year of the Horse: A Wild Ride Part 2
conversation with Tracy Grammer and Richard Shindell
6 weeks after the death of Dave Carter

by Bonny Holder

Senior Reporter

Tracy Grammer's partner in all things, Dave Carter, passed away of a sudden heart attack on July 19, 2002. Senior reporter Bonny Holder met with Tracy and fellow Signature Sounds recording artist Richard Shindell on the 6-week anniversary of that event.

Q: Tracy, when Dave died, you lost not only your life partner, but your singing career as it had been since 1996. The CDs you made with Dave have gotten rave reviews. Where do you go from here?

Tracy Grammer: I'm in a complete tailspin right now in terms of what to do next, although I remain committed to our music, and to Dave's vision, and to what I know he wanted to have done with his songs, who he wanted to sing them, and how he wanted them to be brought forth into the world. I'm still committed to the vision, and to the power of his words and music.

I can't think of anybody who writes like he does, I can't think of any songs like those songs. And so, I'm just totally devoted to working with that, to every extent that I can, for as long as I can.

Q: Were you surprised to find out how many, many people you two have touched in a really deep and serious way?

Tracy: We always joked that we were on the "Every Home in America" program as far as touring goes. And sometimes it felt like that, it felt like we were going door-to-door selling our songs, because, you know, sometimes we'd play in the tiniest of venues, it was like, "Hello!, can you hear us? We've got some songs for you! They're good, we promise!" And so we knew that along the way we were touching a lot of people.

But no, I had no idea that after Dave died I would receive about 2500 e-mails in a week and a half, two weeks. I had no idea, and I had no idea who we had reached. I didn't expect Mary Chapin Carpenter to send me an e-mail, you know? I didn't expect to hear from people- people we were idolizing. People that...well, once Dave and I had a conversation about dying, and he was telling me who I could play with, who I could not play with, who I could marry, who I could not marry if something happened to him. (Laughs.)

And I was reassuring him, I told him, "Baby, I don't want to play with anybody but you." But then I said, "...well, but if Mary Chapin Carpenter called me, I might go play with her." And wouldn't you know! Not that she called me to play with her, but she's in the radar, she knows Dave's music, she's written a song for him. That's just incredible. I haven't heard it, but I've heard about it.

Every time I opened my e-mail in the first days after Dave's death, it brought on this huge flood of tears. It was, like "You're all too late. Too late. He should have known ­ he should have known of you six months ago." We've been getting fan mail forever, and we read everything that we get. But there was ­ a real feeling of regret, that it was too late for him to know.

Q: I feel sorry for the people who never got to see you play together.

Tracy: Well, yeah. Dave always said that he didn't want to be a performer, that he didn't want to be a singer. He never thought he sang well, he just wanted to be a writer, live in a trailer in the desert, or in a cabin in the woods or some other isolated place, and just write songs. And he wanted other people to perform them.

But we recognized that the only way, because we didn't have a publishing deal or a great publicity machine behind us, to get those songs out was to hit the road and truck it around ourselves. Hit highway 80, hit highway 90, hit highway 40. Get all over the country ourselves, hand-deliver the songs, and maybe someone would hear them and carry them to a higher place for us.

Even though he said all that, he was a brilliant storyteller, brilliant storyteller. It comes down from his grandmother, and maybe her grandmother before that. And he was a wonderful, expressive, emotive singer. I would try to convince him that he did not, in fact, sound like a goat. He'd say, "Oh, listen to my voice, I sound like a goat."

I do feel sorry for the people who didn't get to come and see him at what he did best, which was kind of preaching...his songs were all about preaching.

Q: What do you want to accomplish by 9/11 in 2003?

Tracy: What I'm doing right now is archiving some of the songs I'm digging up on various tapes and CDs and DATs that have been collecting dust in a storage closet for the past two years. Listening to all of those and seeing what there is, and listening to things we've recorded recently. I'm hoping to have at least one more Dave & Tracy album, of unreleased material, that I'd like to get out in April, if I can. It will involve a little bit of recording on my part, but most of it's done, actually, we just have to see if it really gels together as a collection.

By then, I will probably be back performing. I have an invitation to come back to Falcon Ridge next year, in whatever configuration I want, so I think that's pretty cool. I just have to find me a band. Dave and I had always talked about starting a psychedelic-country band called the Butterfly Conservatory, so maybe that will come to life in the next year, I don't know.

Really, my mission when I met Dave was to get his songs out into the world, because I thought they were important messages that people needed to hear. I still feel the same way, although the personnel has changed, I feel really committed to the songs, and to him and to his vision.

Q: Richard, you knew Dave. Want to talk a little bit about him?

Richard Shindell: I didn't know Dave for very long. I knew him about six weeks, the same length of time that he's now been gone. And in those six weeks, we were on the Joan Baez tour, Tracy and this band. We had a rocky start, although I didn't know we had a rocky start at the start. (Laughs.) In my blissful ignorance, I just showed up on the tour because somebody said, `you're going on this tour, and you're opening the shows.' I didn't know that Dave and Tracy had originally slated to open the shows, but that got changed. Which I knew nothing about. So that was hard, I think it was hard for Dave, and for Tracy. And we talked about that, and got over it, and then I ended up in the band, which was also a surprise for Dave.

Dave and I instantly liked each other in spite of all these things. So even though I was doing something that originally he was supposed to do, and doing something he was supposed to be doing also ­ something that is a potential for great conflict ­ we became friends, and I ended up just adoring the guy. I really felt like he was going to become one of my good friends, which for an old, anti-social hermit like me is no small thing.

We said goodbye at the end of the tour, and we were all friends. I looked so forward to playing with him onstage, I looked forward to playing on "The Mountain" more than any other moment of the entire show, just playing guitar in the background with Dave playing in the front. Just playing around and having him turn around and wink at me every now and then, I lived for that moment, I just adored it.

And then we said goodbye, and then he died. We had no contact between the day the tour ended, and they day he died, except a couple of messages passed through Tracy about a couple of things.

Tracy: You sent him a big stoic hug.

Richard: (Laughs). Yeah, I sent him a "stoic, manly hug." I said, "tell Dave I send him a stoic, manly hug." Apparently he thought that was amusing. I wish I had sent him an e-mail directly, but you know ­ you don't know that you'll never see the person again. And now, it's very strange because, having known him, and gone through all that with him, and becoming friends, and coming to love him, it was such a strange thing.

Such a mystery, then, to not have him anymore. It was very powerful, very intense, quick, like `wow!, who is this?' and then, all of a sudden they're gone. They were not there, then they were there, then they were not there. He's almost like an apparition in my life, really. He appeared, and then he disappeared.

So now all of his songs and writing and who he was is something I'm ­ mining, in order to fathom the mystery of what that apparition, appearance, means in my life.

Q: What made you choose "Farewell to St. Dolores" to cover?

Richard: I was looking at lots of Dave Carter songs because I wanted to cover one he wrote. I looked at a long of songs. I learned "Cowboy Singer." I play on "The Mountain," but Joan (Baez) sings that in the show. The songs that appeal to me are "Gentle Soldier of My Soul," "Bitterroot Valley," the sort of songs that ­ that say more than they say.

Some of his songs say way more than they say, know what I mean? "Cowboy Singer" says what it says, and it's very clear and beautiful. But a song like "Bitterroot Valley" and "St. Dolores" says way more than is actually on the paper. The images are full of connotations and meanings, and depending on how you feel one day or the next, it takes on other meanings. Tracy's told me that he had one idea of what it meant, to me it has many, many more meanings, and a lot of them now have to do with the fact that he's gone. The meaning of the song is influenced by the fact that he's not there. So when I'm singing the song, I'm informed by his death.

And "St. Dolores" is also the kind of song I might have written, the kind of song that I like in that it's extremely economical, and it says more than ­ it says. It's like a whole world opening up. It's not tied to one meaning, the whole world opens up with those images. Melodically and musically, it's perfect. It's just perfect. It's the song that felt right for me, and I'm sure I will do other ones.

There's a religious content in the song that means a lot to me, because I've had my own religious journey, and a song having to do with one's more earthly existence, and then leaving that behind for a different existence, in those two sorts of lives means a lot to me. I've written about that in the past, although with a different slant. So it's a no-brainer, choosing that song, and it's a joy to sing it.

Q: What's in your upcoming year?

Richard: I hope to have a new CD out next August, if I can get to work and finish lots of songs I've started, and then record it. So I have my tours, then I'm gonna take some time off, and then start recording.

Q: Tracy, is there anything else the Rockzilla.net audience needs to know?

Tracy: Nope.

Q: You doin' OK?

Tracy: Yup.

Tracy Grammer and Richard Shindell both record for Signature Sounds, and can be reached through their website at signaturesounds.com


You can contact Bonny Holder at bonny-at-rockzilla.net

 
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