Mary Chapin Carpenter – HuffPost 6.25.12

Mike Ragogna: Mary Chapin, I would love to ask you–and I ask everybody this question–what advice might you have for new artists these days?

Mary Chapin Carpenter: Oh gosh. I’m not good at giving advice. (laughs) I imagine that nothing I could come up with would be original, and anything I would say probably would sound like some second rate commencement speech. Just the same things we were just talking about, you know? Whatever your profession–let’s just say you were choosing music–you have to be prepared for a lot of rejection. You have to be prepared for sort of just following your happiness as far as it can take you and trying not to care when people dismiss you or whatever. As long as something makes you happy and you feel passionate about it, then I think you have what you need to weather the storms. As far as anything more technical than that, I don’t think I can give advice. I would just say play all the music you can, write what’s in your heart, and, like we said, be a good person and treat other people right.