'Hometown Girl' Mary Chapin Carpenter visits her home state

With the release of Hometown Girl, her 1987 debut album, Mary Chapin Carpenter launched a career that now includes 18 top-20 country singles, five Grammy Awards, and induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Her literate blend of folk, pop, and country incorporates influences from Emmylou Harris to Eudora Welty.

For Carpenter, who will perform Thursday at the Scottish Rite Auditorium in Collingswood and April 25 at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, the seeds of her success were planted in Princeton, where she spent her formative years.

"I grew up in a house surrounded by music," she says in a recent phone interview, recalling her mother's collection of classical music and film scores. Those recordings helped provide inspiration for Songs From the Movie, her latest CD and first album with orchestral backing.

Carpenter also speaks fondly of one of her earliest musical influences in Princeton.

"My music teacher, Madge Gilbert, was my hero," the 57-year-old singer-songwriter says, adding, "she was one of the most important people in my life," recalling her enthusiasm and patience in working with children.

In Princeton, Carpenter developed her skills as a musician, with some help from her family. "My mother had a guitar and my sister had a bass ukulele," she says. "I remember playing 'Cielito Lindo' in the fourth grade," she says, referring to the traditional Mexican folk song.

At McCarter, Carpenter was exposed to the arts as a performer and spectator.

"I made my theatrical debut there as one of the children in a community musical production of The King and I when I was 6," she says. She and her mother also attended performances of The Nutcracker there during the Christmas season.

Although she hasn't lived in New Jersey in more than 40 years, Carpenter says that "any time I get the chance to come to the town where I grew up, it's special. It still resonates with me."

The title track of Hometown Girl includes these lines: "We'd ride all summer with the top rolled down/ Through the sleepy streets of that Jersey town." On "Stones in the Road," the title track to her 1994 album, she remembers being taken as a 10-year-old by her father to Trenton in June 1968 to see the funeral train carrying the body of Sen. Robert Kennedy.

Carpenter is upbeat about Songs From the Movie, in which she reinterprets 10 of her songs with a 63-piece orchestra and 15-voice choir.

"It's been a dream a mine to do this record and took 10 years to bring it to fruition," Carpenter says. "It's changed my life and career. This is one of those records not based on hits or radio charts. It's something I can do for the rest of my life." She has performed the album live with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Like an artist working with a bigger canvas and more colors, with these new tools Carpenter adds new dynamics to her work. The down-to-earth lyrics of "I Am a Town" are transformed by a stirring arrangement, while "Goodnight America" becomes a condensed, six-minute symphony.

Carpenter credits arranger, conductor, and coproducer Vince Mendoza with giving the album its cinematic feel. "He transformed the songs, taking them to new places. Vince composed beautiful passages that weren't there originally."

On her current tour, Carpenter is performing acoustically and will be accompanied by pianist Jon Carroll and guitarist John Doyle. She is preparing to record a new album later this year.

Carpenter's songwriting ranges from the confessional heartbreak of "This Shirt" to the rollicking, Cajun-influenced "Down at the Twist and Shout." Her songs have been recorded by, among others, Wynonna Judd ("Girls with Guitars"), Joan Baez ("Stones in the Road") and Maura O'Connell ("It Don't Bring You").

Carpenter was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2012, joining such legends as Willie Nelson, Buddy Holly, and Dolly Parton. It was an honor she describes as "tremendously exciting and very humbling." The diversity of the inductees illustrates the paths each songwriter has traveled, she says. At her induction, she said, "We do not have to be like anyone else. Our uniqueness is our calling card and our treasure."

Mary Chapin Carpenter

With Lunasa, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Scottish Rite Auditorium, 315 White Horse Pike, Collingswood.

Tickets $29.50-$49.50.

Information: 856-858-1000 or www.ticketmaster.com.

(Also at 8 p.m. April 25 at McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton. Tickets: $42-$50. Information: 609-258-2787 or www.mccarter.org.)