[dar-list] dave carter

[BornALittleLate at aol.com]

A very interesting article..


Folk singer Tracy Grammer in town

Jeff Spevak
Staff music  critic
Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

(December 7, 2006) b Winter  is coming on. It's
not likely there will be any more dragonflies
flitting about Tracy Grammer until the spring.
Perhaps they would have  faded away anyway, since
she's hooked up with a new musical partner, Jim
Henry, a multi-instrumentaliHenry, a multi-i
hundreds of albums" she  says b who lives in
Shutesbury, Mass. That connection precipitated
her  recent move to there from Portland, Ore.,
"because I figured rehearsals  would be a lot
easier if we didn't have to drive 3,000 miles.

"The  strange thing is, now I drive almost daily
past the hotel where everything  happened ... ."

Grammer, who performs Saturday at the Harmony
House,  is someone the folk world was coming to
know. But not without Dave  Carter.

They literally bumped into each other at a gig in
1996. "Dave  said, 'Oh, you have a violin?'"
Grammer remembers. "'How would you like to  be in my band?'"

They recorded three albums together, propelled by
Carter's odd, dream-driven songs. Their 2000
release, Tanglewood Tree,  drew critical raves.
Carter liked to call it "the first Buddhist
country  album." It was not the earthy realism of
folk, but psychedelic  meanderings.

"Dave would like that," Grammer says of the psychedelic  reference.

At first, Grammer was second fiddle, literally.
"That was  a role that I stepped into willingly,"
she says. "He was like the shaman,  the lightning
rod. It felt right, and I always believed the focus should be  on him."

Yet slowly, Carter was pushing Grammer to the
front. She was  becoming the voice for his music.
"It was almost a preparation for what  eventually happened."

It happened at that hotel where she now drives
past on many days, in Hadley, Mass. They had a
gig that night, and  Carter had returned to the
room following a jog, suffered a massive heart
attack and died in Grammer's arms. He was done, at age 49.

That was  four years ago, but his music
essentially became her music. Grammer's  decision
to pick up where they had left off, and build
from there, took  "about a minute," she says.

"We were in the hospital, looking at him, and  I
was trying to explain to the hospital people
there, 'He was a  religious person, you know, he's
really brilliant, he was a poet, he was  really
kinda famous ... .' And they're saying, 'Oh yes,
we're sure he  was kinda special.' And I said,
'No, you don't get it, this person is a big
deal.' So I always knew I had to sound the trumpet.

"I drove his  ashes home to Portland, by way of
Kansas for a service with his family. In a  sense
I was driving a hearse, something I just thought of two weeks  ago.

"I remembered talking about how we were so
focused on our  careers, so focused on forward
motion. I was so flooded with memories, and
things I hadn't thought of forever. I saw animals
in the road, clouds in  sky. There were dragonflies everywhere.

"I began thinking of them as his  insect
manifestation. I started getting dragonflies from
people. They  just noticed dragonflies hanging
around me, and they thought it was Dave. I  guess
no one was ready to let go of him."

But Carter has moved on. He  has told Grammer so.
"I've never really said this to anyone before,"
Grammer says. "All I really had was dreams where
Dave was trying to get  rid of me. It was like he
was saying, 'Look, I'm done with that now. Move  on, move on.'

Grammer and Carter had always been quiet about
the true  nature of their relationship. It has
only been this fall that she's conceded  that it
was, for a time, romantic as well as spiritual
and musical. And  more than anyone could have speculated.

"I think it was 2001, maybe  2000," she says. "We
had just moved into a house. And he said, 'You know ...  .'"

"I said, 'You've got to be kidding.'"

What she now knew was  that Dave Carter, her
bigger-than-bigger-than-<WBR>life shaman, wanted to

"At first I was fascinated," Grammer says. "I had
never known  anyone like that. Then I got angry.
It was a struggle. But I don't think it  affected the music."

Carter went ahead, and by 2002 was beginning the
extensive process required of all gender-change
candidates. "We couldn't  break up; we were having
the hardest time," Grammer says.

"And then,  I had this major epiphany. It was
about two weeks before he died. We always  felt we
were partners in all things, to the end. I
realized I was  pushing against him, when all he
wanted was someone to understand.

"I  felt so glad we were at that place before he died."

_http://tinyurl.http://tin_ (http://tinyurl.com/yxv7kt)

"Sheila tells  the policeman, 'I've got all of his phone messages here on a
cassette marked  'Death Threats'. No, he never sent any letters, he's dyslexic
so he doesn't like  to write anything, ever. It's funny, he always said how
that made him more  compassionate...'"- Susan Werner, Bring 'Round The  Boat