Mary Chapin Carpenter's "Grand Central Station"
Never quite popular country, more personal country, Mary Chapin Carpenter has always stood apart from the Nashville mainstream. Still, by working folk and pop influences into her music, she's found an appreciative audience, as 12 million album sales testify. Her new album, Between Here And Gone, is her most individual statement yet.
Mary Chapin Carpenter was in New York City on 11 September 2001 to tape a TV show in lower Manhattan and she witnessed first hand the awful events of that day. On the first anniversary of the tragedy, she heard a National Public Radio interview with an ironworker who was one of the first on the scene. What he experienced prompted him to make a pilgrimage to Grand Central Station so that the souls of the departed could follow him there and on to their trains home. Deeply moved, Carpenter responded to the story with the song "Grand Central Station":
Got my workclothes on full of sweat and dirt
All this holy dust upon my face and shirt
Heading uptown now just as the shifts are changing
To Grand Central Station
Got my lunchbox, got my hard hat in my hand
I ain't no hero mister, just a working man
And all these voices keep on asking me to take them
To Grand Central Station
Grand Central StationI want to stand beneath the clock one more time
Want to wait upon the platform for the Hudson Line
I guess you're never really all alone
Or too far from the pull of home
And the stars upon that painted dome still shineI made my way out on to 42nd street
I lit a cigarette and stared down at my feet
And imagined all the ones that ever stood here waiting
At Grand Central Station, Grand Central StationNow Hercules is staring down at me
Next to him is Minerva and Mercury
I nod to them and start my crawl, flyers covering every wall
Faces of the missing all I seeTomorrow I'll be back there working on the pile
Going in and coming out single file
Before my job is done there's one more trip I'm making
To Grand Central Station, Grand Central Station
Grand Central Station, Grand Central StationMary Chapin Carpenter, 2004
As the body artistic, as opposed to the body politic, comes to terms with that terrible but defining moment, we can expect many more statements about 9/11.
