John Jennings: A Hit For Carpenter's Helper

By Richard Harrington

Friday, March 14 1997; Page N15
The Washington Post

YOU'D THINK that a singer-songwriter who titles his debut album "Buddy" would cash in on a bosom buddy, particularly one who has sold millions of records. But John Jennings, who has produced or co-produced all of Mary Chapin Carpenter's albums and who has been her guitarist, helpmate and, well, best buddy since the early '80s, didn't do the commercially crass and obvious thing.

"The reason Chapin's not on the record is because I did it when I was off the road and sort of dropped it in the slots between a lot of other things I was doing with her," Jennings says from his home-away-from-home in Nashville. "It never really came up. I'll exploit her later," he adds with a laugh.

After all, Jennings says, "had it not been for Chapin, my life would be very different. I'd like to think that, had it not been for me, hers would have been very different, too."

After touring only three months in 1996 and taking most of 1995 off, Carpenter and Co. will be on the road from April until the end of August, with dates at Wolf Trap July 25-27. On Wednesday, the Barns of Wolf Trap will play host to Jennings and other members of Carpenter's band -- drummer Robbie Magruder, pianist Jonathan Carroll, bassist J.T. Brown and guitarist Duke Levine (all but Levine played on "Buddy"), as well as a few special guests.

"When I was doing `Buddy,'" Jennings says, "I don't know that I took it that seriously -- I did it from the standpoint that I wanted it to be good, but I didn't know that it would end up anywhere."

Where it ended up (after several years delay) was Vanguard Records and where it's headed is to the top: "Buddy," which received a 3 1/2-star rave in USA Today, is currently the No. 2 album on the Gavin Report's "Americana" charts and AAA (album adult alternative) radio is playing several tracks: "Monday Night," "Walking to China," "Willie Short" (previously recorded by Carpenter on the "Red Hot & Country" AIDS-benefit album) and the presciently titled "Everybody Loves Me" (which is also the video).

"I didn't anticipate any success," insists Jennings, adding that "my sole objective when Vanguard signed me was to not get fired. This is all so sudden, I certainly wasn't prepared for it. Maybe I'm about to sprout yet another career. I do know that it's probably better this happened now than 20 years ago. I would have been an insufferable jerk."

Such self-deprecating humor can be a valuable tool for any artist. For instance, when Jennings points out that "Buddy" was recorded between 1990 and early 1993 but didn't get picked up by Vanguard until mid-1996, he has an explanation: "I'd just like to think it was ahead of its time . . . but it's probably not." Of course, early in the decade, there was no such radio format as Americana or AAA.

Though he's been living in Nashville for almost four years (the Luray, Va., native still keeps a place here), Jennings signed not with one of the many country labels that have crowded Music Row since the post-Garth Brooks boom, but with Vanguard, a label with a rich history in folk circles (Joan Baez, the Weavers, Ian & Sylvia, Doc Watson, etc).

"Knowing what the labels down here are after, I just didn't think I would do anything for them, that it would help them in any way," Jennings says. In any event, he's less country than a singer-songwriter out of the narrative folk tradition, "which covers a lot of territory and is my comfort zone. People can call it what they will."

Jennings started writing in 1970 and there was a time in the late '70s when his songs and his presence fueled a moderately successful local progressive rock band, Big Yankee Dollar. In retrospect, the experience was far too costly, Jennings says. "Many of my not-so-great moments I experienced around then. I think I just got a little gun shy because I was not . . . behaving."

Things got exponentially better in the mid-'80s when he teamed up with a young singer-songwriter who had moved to Washington after graduating from Brown. Jennings and Mary (then-hyphenated) Chapin Carpenter started performing on the local folk circuit as he produced a demo tape to shop around Nashville.

"Chapin's a marvelous songwriter and certainly my best friend," says Jennings. "I always believed she had the goods, so I always believed things would go well for her, and she would be someone to reckon with. Did I think it would ever go this far? Of course not, but it's great!"

For one thing, Jennings has been able to go along for the ride without having to drive, and it's given him a good view of the road not taken.

"I don't think I could handle a career that big," he says of Carpenter's achievement. "We've gone from playing Food for Thought and Kramerbooks' Afterwords and the Birchmere to playing the Enormodome! It's been very educational and very sobering for me to be on the sidelines for that because she had to go through a lot. The level of responsibility to different people and entities increases exponentially, and you really don't have a lot of unstructured time, which I really thrive on and have to have to stay sane. While I want to be successful, it's not something I'm going to go out of my way for, and I don't really see it for me."

When Jennings moved to Nashville, it was a pragmatic decision. "D.C. will always be home," he says, "but I have never been in a real industrial factory music town before. There are musicians in Washington as good as anywhere, but once you get into New York, Los Angeles and Nashville, suddenly there are many such musicians and many combinations of people you can put together. It's a different kind of scene, not necessarily in terms of club dates but in terms of resources."

For singer-songwriters, "this is the grail," Jennings notes. And, he points out, "there's no state income taxes, which is really a beautiful thing!"

Though he'd been considered one of the top guitarists in Washington, Jennings admits he hasn't done much session work in Nashville. "It's not like there aren't enough good guitar players here," he jokes. "Who needs one more?" He has gotten the call as producer, however, doing albums with the Cajun group Beausoleil and fellow songwriting travelers Janis Ian, John Gorka, Bill Morrisey and Niaimh Cavanagh from Ireland.

Partly, Jennings explains, that's because he's so closely associated with Carpenter. "Which is fine. That would be enough for any sane person, all that's come from that and the amount of recording and touring we do."

JOHN JENNINGS -- Appearing Wednesday at the Barns of Wolf Trap. To hear a free Sound Bite from "Buddy," call Post-Haste at 202/334-9000 and press 8121. (Prince William residents, call 690-4110.)

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company