If it didn't have the potential to piss people off, the term literate country might work well for Mary Chapin Carpenter. After all, her music falls well outside the confines of country convention. Carpenter has always walked the line between folk and honky-tonk and has managed to blaze a brave artistic trail while still triumphing commercially. Carpenter's background -- raised and educated in Washington, D.C., time spent living abroad as a child -- lends a worldliness to her perspective. But it's her fearless penchant for themes such as feminism and her philosophical reflections on the passage of time that grant her true Nashville-outsider status. There's more to standing apart from Nashville than being hardcore country or singing the word fuck. Even fellow "outsider" Hank Williams III would have to give Carpenter credit for having real guts.
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