Mary Chapin Carpenter first picked up a guitar after her mother took to strumming during the folk movement of the early 1960s and hasn't put one down since. Born and raised in Princeton, NJ, Carpenter did her fair share of traveling as a child; her father was a Life magazine big wig who brought his family to live with him in Japan for a few years while the Asian edition of Life was being launched.

Carpenter played music recreationally in high school but didn't think of pursuing it as a career until she became embedded in the folk music scene of Washington D.C. when her family moved there in 1974. Upon graduating from high school, Carpenter spent a year backpacking in Europe before returning to the States to begin studying American civilization at Brown University. She returned to folk music after earning her degree and met guitarist Josh Jennings, with whom she began performing with in the early ‘80s. The duo's demo tape landed at the doorstep of Columbia Records and earned Carpenter an audition.

In 1987 Carpenter inked a record deal with Columbia and released her first album, Hometown Girl, followed by her sophomore release, State of the Heart, two years later. Carpenter secured a cult following and two Top Ten singles ("Never Had It So Good" and "Quittin' Time",) but country radio was slow to catch on to her feminist yet soft songs (college radio stations, on the other hand, loved her folk music.) In 1990 Carpenter released Shooting Straight in the Dark and broke into the mainstream with "Down at the Twist and Shout." Her official breakthrough came in the form of 1992's Come On Come On, which spawned smash singles "I Feel Lucky," "Passionate Kisses" and "He Thinks He'll Keep Her" (her first number one single.) In 1994 Carpenter released her folksy fifth album, Stones in the Road, followed by 1996's Place in the World and 2001's Time*Sex*Love*. Pianist Matt Rollings produced 2004's Between Here and Gone and her most recent release is 2008's Come Darkness Come Light.