Here’s Dave Carter with Tracy Grammer from 2002, singing a song he had just written at the Sisters Folk Festival in Sisters, Oregon.

“Gentle Arms of Eden,” live on stage. This song may be the duo’s best known and has been incorporated into at least one Unitarian Universalist hymnal.

It’s hard to write about Carter without starting at the end. On the morning of July 19, 2002 in Hadley, MA, Carter went out for a run. When he returned to the hotel, he suffered a heart attack.

Tracy wrote their fans in an open letter on their website:

“Yesterday, shortly after he went unconscious, he came back for a lucid minute or two to tell me, ‘I just died… Baby, I just died…’ There was a look of wonder in his eyes, and though I cried and tried to deny it to him, I knew he was right and he was on his way. He stayed with me a minute more but despite my attempts to keep him with me, I could see he was already riding that thin chiffon wave between here and gone. He loved beauty, he was hopelessly drawn to the magic and the light in all things. I figure he saw something he could not resist out of the corner of his eye and flew into it.”

Dave Carter was 49 years old.

It doesn’t embed here, but there is a nice 2002 interview with the couple (and they were a couple, as well as a duo) from ArtsBeat Oregon from Oregon Public Broadcasting here.

More background on Dave and Tracy can be found in a review and interview by David Bulla in the Music Matters Review. Some highlights from that story:

Carter describes his parents: steeped in math and science and also touched by the Holy Spirit and evangelism. Dave eventually made his way to Portland, OR to study math there. He worked as a computer programmer and mathematician before turning to folk music in his 40s.

Meanwhile, Grammer studied English and anthropology at UC Berkeley:

“Through a combination of studies I unearthed a love for Native American literatures. Dave’s songs are full of Native American imagery and the very first time I heard him play, I felt an instant connection, like he might be the place where all of the things I truly loved—language, anthropology, and music—would finally come together.”

Carter cites a number of songwriting heroes, including Joni Mitchell, the Beatles’ psychedelic period and the Dukes of Stratosphear (an XTC project to produce records in the late 1960s psychedelic pop style), as well as “Leonard Cohen, Emmylou Harris, Sean Colvin, Buck Owens, Miles Davis, Dwight Yokum, Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin and Waylon Jennings.”

Grammer described meeting Carter in Portland:

“I heard Dave play two songs toward the end of a Portland Songwriters’ Association showcase. I tell you, it’s like the entire room disappeared. I was deeply moved and instantly drawn in but far too shy to do anything more than recognize the power of Dave’s music and hope that some day I could play with someone like him. Thanks to luck and timing, we met on the way out the door. I was carrying my violin, having played with another songwriter earlier in the evening We were introduced, he noticed my instrument, and invited me to play with his band sometime. ‘It’ll never happen,’ I thought to myself. ‘Sure,’ I said. But he really did call, and I really did go to that first practice, and we’ve been playing together ever since.”

Carter on songwriting:

“I hear music and lyrics in my dreams a lot of times, and I get up and write them down. I pay a lot of attention to my dreams, and whenever I can, I try to keep myself in a creative, daydreamy sort of state. I’m interested in shamanic work and meditation, and I think it’s beneficial for an artist to walk with one foot in the waking world and one foot in the dream world.”

Joyce Marcel, a writer and fan, wrote an obituary for Carter (and Alan Lomax, who died the same day) in which she contemplated the recipe of Carter’s songwriting:

Dave was the son of an evangelist mother and a mathematician father, hence a life-long tension between the mystic and the logical. His solution, I think, was to write his words from his mystical place and then watch the mathematician take delight in squeezing them into complicated and super-fast rhythms. Then, Tracy complained, he made her sing them.

A week after Carter’s death, the duo were scheduled to perform at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. Tracy Grammer went alone.

From a review by Jennifer Hanson in Rambles:

The memorials to Dave Carter were many. They began during the Emerging Artist Showcase on Friday afternoon with Don Conoscenti’s dedication of his song “The Other Side” to an unnamed friend whose identity was not difficult to figure out. Guitar wizard Jeff Lang played a short instrumental version of Carter’s song “When I Go” during his main stage set, then said simply, “Thank you, Dave Carter.”

In place of Dave and Tracy’s set, Grammer sang Carter’s “The Mountain” to open a series of performances of Carter’s songs. She closed with “Gentle Soldier of My Soul.”

Grammer also spoke; she was clearly moved by the standing ovations she received by way of greeting and farewell. Considering everything she had been through, her composure was nothing short of remarkable.

Tracy Grammer continues to perform Dave Carter’s songs and has released music they had recorded before his untimely death.

As a duo, they had always performed Carter’s songs. After his passing, Grammer wrote her first original composition, a eulogy for Carter called “The Verdant Mile”:

 

At Falcon Ridge on the 10th anniversary of Dave Carter’s death:

[Bonus for Grammer and NFS fans: you can find her cover of Carole King's "Wasn't Born to Follow" on Spotify]

The Indigo Girls, Emily Saliers and Amy Ray, each write individually, although they have performed together since they were teenagers. Closer To Fine, their biggest early hit, was written by Saliers.

In an interview with the website Songfacts.com, she spoke about the song:

It is based on real experiences. I mean, all of my songs, they’re a combination of real experiences and what I observe through other peoples’ behavior and experience. So that song… I was with my family in Vermont, and we were sitting in this, like, rustic cabin, and I was sitting on a front porch and looking out into the trees, which, you know, whenever you’re such a bucolic setting, it can make you feel very philosophical. So that’s how I was feeling. And that song is about not beating yourself up too hard to get your answer from one place. There’s no panacea, that in order to be balanced or feel closer to fine it’s okay to draw from this or to draw from that, to draw from a bunch of different sources. So it’s about being confused but looking for the answers, and in the end knowing that you’re going to be fine. No seeking just one definitive answer.

I remember in high school one of my teachers had a poster of Rasputin on his door. You know, and his pictures just looked so bizarre to me, and always struck me. And I sort of put those images together, and it was sort of a poke at academia and the way it can sometimes be removed from reality. So I was saying I don’t think this professor has the right to judge me in terms of real life, when we’re caught up in this insular, sort of strange academic world. So that was sort of a comment about that.

Amy and I used to be a bar band, and we would play ’til 3 a.m. like every night. So practically… for 13 nights in a row. Three sets, finishing at 3 a.m., so I had some early experiences at bars at 3 a.m., certainly.

The Indigo Girls were nominated for a best new artist Grammy following the release of their self-titled, second album which contained “Closer to Fine.” They lost that Grammy to… guesses? Milli Vanilli. Harsh.

Their recording of the song featured members of the Irish band Hothouse Flowers (on mandolin, tin whistle, bodhran and backing vocals). You might remember Hothouse Flowers’ song “Don’t Go”:

The song also featured backing vocals from Luka Bloom (Christy Moore’s younger brother), a great songwriter and performer in his own right.

The Girls must have been in some sort of Irish phase.

I learned how to play guitar around the time “Closer To Fine” came out and it was one of those songs that people passed along because the chords are just a little bit different from standard but if you master them, you sound just like the record. (Or so we told ourselves.)

In particular, this was a moment when the C9 chord was huge. Learn this chord and it seemed like you could play a whole bunch of songs.

Just on acoustic guitar, you hear C9 on “Closer To Fine” (1989) and Guns n Roses’ “Patience” (1989) and the same chord shape is used in Lyle Lovett’s “If I Had a Boat” (1987) and Oasis’ “Wonderwall” (1995).

On electric, you can hear it on “Welcome to the Jungle” (1987) (Izzy Stradlin’ must like this chord) and the GoGos’ “Head Over Heels (1984).

 

Once you master that C9 — and figure out the strumming pattern — “Closer To Fine” sounds great. There aren’t too many oddball covers of the song, but here’s a small selection of other versions:

“Closer To Fine” with male voices, from two guys from Sister Hazel

A punk version:

 

The Indigo Girls play “Closer To Fine” at every concert (fans might not go home until they do). They claim they are not tired of doing the song, in part because they invite their opening act, audience members or other guests to sing along so it’s always a little different.

So here’s… sigh… a version with ADA Claire Kincaid — I mean, actress (and former Toronto busker) Jill Hennesy:

For some reason Jill keeps giving the satan salute. Not sure if I like her more or less because of it.