Becoming a parent changes a person’s life in profound ways, and often it crystallizes dreams, drive and a commitment to a new path in life. For musician and new mother Vanessa Carlton, it brought an unexpected bundle of focus.
Carlton, who’ll be performing Saturday at the Southern Cafe and Music Hall on a bill with Joshua Hyslop, has made plenty of changes recently. Trading the Big Apple for Music City, the singer known for “A Thousand Miles” and her husband, John McCauley of the band Deer Tick, are raising their daughter in Nashville, Tennessee. And all the late nights and plans changed on the fly that come along with welcoming a new baby have given Carlton a new appreciation for the here and now.
“What I’ve noticed is, in live shows, I’m more in the moment now than I have been in the past,” the songwriter said from a recent tour stop in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “You don’t have a lot of extra energy in terms of wasting it. That’s when a good performance happens: when the artist in front of you is in the moment.”
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Being present for her daughter and husband — “my family is my priority now,” she said — has helped her become more present on stage for her listeners. That really pays off when audiences on her current tour are singing her lyrics from “Liberman” right back to her.
On her fifth studio album, released Oct. 23 on Dine Alone Records, the pop star’s more burnished folk side is coming through. There’s a wistfulness, a gentleness, to the new collection, which tones down instrumentation and ornamentation to let Carlton’s lyrics and vocal delivery come forward. Fans already are embracing the songs “Operator” and “Willows,” and both “Blue Pool” and “Take It Easy” will be familiar to fans who picked up her “Blue Pool” EP in July.
The collection takes its name from Carlton’s grandfather; one of his vivid oil paintings seemed to capture the heart of the music she’d penned for the collection.
Learning to live in the moment has brought a new sense of freedom to the recording process, too. While working with producer Steve Osborne at Real World Studio in Box, England, Carlton was pleased to see “how much more willing I am to build up something in the studio and tear it down.” She recorded the rest of “Liberman” with producer Adam Landry back home in Nashville.
In England, “the only rules we were following were our own instincts, our own sense of beauty,” she said. “It made for a record that we obviously love, but also a more peaceful process.”
This time, Carlton felt much more at ease with the alchemy of the recording process and realized she’d developed “the courage to start over and see what happens. It’s like a muscle; it can get stronger,” she said.
And the fact that the woman behind “A Thousand Miles” and “Ordinary Day” doesn’t have to stay in pop-princess mode to please longtime listeners at the risk of stifling her craft is gratifying. There’s plenty of room in her show for past hits and new material, and listeners seem to be enjoying both.
“People are totally embracing the fact that I’ve grown up,” Carlton said warmly. “I feel a little more understood.”
Carlton’s daughter, who has been spending some time with her mom on tour, recently went back home to Nashville with her daddy. “So far, it works,” Carlton said of her tour/family balance. And her little one already has a joyful approach to music.
“She dances when music is on, in her little baby way,” Carlton said with a chuckle.
Jane Dunlap Norris is the features editor for The Daily Progress. Contact her at (434) 978-7249 or jnorris@dailyprogress.com