Mary Chapin Carpenter

It was a spur of the moment thing.  We see a story yesterday morning in the Post-Gazette about Mary Chapin Carpenter's appearance at the Homestead Carnegie Library Music Hall last night.  I go on-line to see if tickets are still available.  They are, and I buy two, and we have a nice date last night to see one of our favorite singers!


Carpenter is currently on the road promoting her new CD, "Ashes and Roses" (which I also purchased via iTunes yesterday) and the stop in Homestead was the first stop on this tour that will run through October.  She performed for an hour and forty-five minutes, and while she did most of the songs from the new CD, there was still lots of the old stuff - Shut Up and Kiss Me, Saturday Night at the Twist and Shout, Stones in the Road, Passionate Kisses, and many, many others.  It was a terrific show from a wonderful and talented performer.  A really fun night for us.  By the way, this was not the first time we had seen Carpenter in concert.  We saw her a few years back at the Palumbo Center when "Stones in the Road"  was released.  It wasn't until we got home and checked the release date for "Stones..." and saw that it was 1995 that we realized that "a few years back" was actually SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO!!!  Wow.


A word about the venue.  My grandparents lived on Ninth Avenue in Munhall, and the Homestead Library was almost - but not quite - literally in their back yard.  I had ridden past that Library building countless times as I grew up, and was well schooled in the family lore of how my mother, Ruthie Madden, learned to swim in the pool in the Library building alongside with two future US Olympians, Lenore Kite and Eleanor Holm.  For all of that, I had never been inside that building myself until last night, so I somehow felt that I was closing a circle in my life.  Kind of a neat feeling.


The building was dedicated in 1895 by Andrew Carnegie himself.  The music hall is on the smaller side, it does have a balcony, but it gives a very intimate feel to the performance and the acoustics are excellent.  They have an interesting line up of acts scheduled to appear in the months ahead, including a Beatles tribute band in December.  Parking is on the street surrounding the library and is free.  Kind of an under publicized gem in terms of a performing arts venue in the city.