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Elle Carpenter to celebrate release of her fifth album

Singer-songwriter Elle Carpenter celebrates fifth album
Courtesy of Elle Carpenter

Durango singer-songwriter Elle Carpenter is about to release her fifth album, “Sincerely Yours,” and she’s throwing a CD release party to celebrate.

We sat down with her earlier this week and talked about what it takes to be a musician.

Q: Is your new album different than your others?

A: Kind of, yeah. For one thing, it’s the first one with a label. And in terms of genre, I’ve kind of gone full circle from where I started because I used to sing a lot of folk and classic folk and world and all sorts of stuff. The last album was kind of Americana acousticy, but it was still kind of more of a gateway, and this is really – this label is completely Americana, they’re not pop at all, although I write pop songs sometimes. It’s a really good album, and I’m just really happy with the direction.

Q: Is music your day job? Is this what you do all the time?

A: Mostly, yes ... Let me tell you what my days are: I wake up ... hopefully have coffee, and then opening my computer, tackling each social-media outlet, making sure I’m going to post something today. I release one YouTube video per week; that can be really time-consuming depending on what the video is.

Q: Is social media now part of your job description?

A: Yes. Absolutely.

Q: Do you think it helps?

A: I think particularly I’ve been working on building my Twitter following in the past year, and I actually think that with this new album, that Twitter following is really playing a big role in how many sales I’ll have, pre-sales.

I took a music marketing course at one point with a guy named Rick Barker – he used to be Taylor Swift’s manager – and now he’s educating artists to do stuff ... One of the main things I learned was how to build a faithful following so that you’re not just building eggs, or random people who don’t really care. You’re building people that you become friends with even if it’s over Twitter, and they’re really faithful to you, and that’s kind of what I’ve found. So it really helps.

And I’ve also, ironically through that, I’ve also met certain people that have become homestays on my tour because part of how I profit on my tours is I try not to spend money where I don’t need to ... it’s really cool; it’s really worked out.

Q: Who are some of your influences?

A: I grew up listening to Joni Mitchell; Joan Baez; John Denver; Peter, Paul and Mary; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; Simon and Garfunkel – all the classic folk people. My mom was really into them, and so she had all of those on vinyl, she still does ...

So I grew up listening to that, and also singing that; there were four girls, one boy and my mom. She, basically, from a young age, started us singing together. And it was mostly a cappella when we sang as a family. We’d do between three- and five-part harmonies a cappella.

That was mostly the classic folk stuff and also really just classic songs; there’s a book called Rise Up Singing – it has a lot of those artists’ songs in it, it also has The Beatles, and it has kind of unknown, who knows who wrote this, it’s just a traditional song... We did a lot out of that book as a family.

Q: Did that form your interest in music?

A: Like I said, it’s come full circle.

I was pretty excited to put Graham Nash’s “Teach Your Children” on the album. Part of why I really wanted to do that is because ‘Whoa, I finally have a band who could do it justice.’ So that’s one thing: Singing with my family, classic folk.

Another thing I did as a kid starting from when I was 10 or 11 was I was singing with a world folk music group. We did everything from New England shape-note singing to Balkan-style folk music and a little bit of Russian and Georgian and then German classical, so really a wide range of material with that group – they’re called Village Harmony, and they’re still going strong.

katie@durangoherald.com

For more information

You can catch up with Elle Carpenter on these websites:

www.ellecarpenter.com

twitter.com/ellecarpenter

facebook.com/ellecarpentermusic

youtube.com/ellecarpenter

If you go

What:

Elle Carpenter’s “Sincerely Yours” CD release party

When:

9 p.m. Thursday

Where:

Balcony Backstage, 600 Main Ave.



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