Newcomer to perform Sunday in Palmer

PALMER — Though she’s been to Alaska many times, singer/songwriter Carrie Newcomer said that for her latest tour, the weather still managed to throw her for a loop.

“I’ve never been here in March,” she said. “I was kind of checking the weather to decide. ‘Do I bring very cold weather clothes?’”

Newcomer will perform at Vagabond Blues at 7 p.m., Sunday, offering folk roots music with Appalachian and classical influences. It’s a solo show. Just Newcomer onstage, though she will have as an opening act, roots musician Anna Coogan.

So far, she said, the weather has cooperated, treating her to clear, blue skies in Sitka. The locals were also very nice.

“Just a welcoming, friendly community, which I have always found everywhere I’ve been in Alaska.

Newcomer is a professional musician, which is to say that writing and performing is her day job and has been since 1990. Her latest release, “Before and After,” is her 12th album recorded for the roots music imprint Rounder Records.

“I feel very fortunate that I get to do these things I love so much. And it takes me to places like Anchorage, Alaska, India — all of these places that are just fabulous,” she said.

Being a professional, she said, doesn’t mean she’s on the road constantly. In fact, she doesn’t do a lot of long tours, tending instead to head out briefly and then return home. She works with students and conducts workshops.

“It’s always that elusive balance,” she said. “I do a lot of writing about spirit of place so I really need to be in touch with my place, with my community.”

Another theme she said listeners will likely find in her music is the importance of experiencing and enjoying moments in a person’s day.

“We’re all very busy and it’s very easy to not be present in our own lives,” Newcomer said. “When I pull back all those layers of distraction what is there at the heart of the matter?”

She describes it as “finding something extraordinary in an ordinary day.”

Her music also deals quite a bit with the divine. Newcomer said that she does a lot of work with faith groups, but she doesn’t like to put her beliefs into any readily defined box. That the spiritual finds its way into her music only means that she’s not censoring herself. It’s in the music because it’s in her.

“I’d have to say I’m one of a growing number of people that don’t want to put the sacred in such a small container,” she said. “I kind of jump secular-spiritual lines daily. And I like that. I like that a lot, actually, that I can play a church and play in a bar and I don’t change my show.”

She said she also tells a lot of stories in her music. Stories inspire her, a trait she suspects she shares with most people.

“We’re narrative people,” Newcomer said. “If you’re sitting in an airport and you turn to the person next to you and say, ‘tell me about your grandpa,’ they probably will tell you. And they’ll tell you some amazing stories.”

As for what’s next, Newcomer said that at the end of the summer she’ll release her next album. It’s a collaboration with a group of classical Indian musicians.

And she’ll continue living the life of a musician, satisfying her wanderlust.

“I think it’s pretty hard to be a traveling songwriter if you don’t have a little bit of wanderlust. I love how places have such personalities,” she said. “There’s no place like Chapel Hill North Carolina and there’s no place like Portland, Ore., or Albuquerque, N.M., or Madison, Wisc. Places have such incredible personalities and language and food and history and environment,” she said.

One of the benefits of being a traveling performer, she said, is that she gets to see all these places. And since she’s performing at a certain level, she gets to see them up close.

“It’s not like I’m the Rolling Stones going from arena to arena,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.