Laura Stegman is a writer and public relations consultant in Los Angeles. Her last feature story for JTO was about David Lasley. Her next will be about Clifford Carter.

A Talk With Valerie Carter
By Laura Stegman

Valerie Carter Valerie-Carter.com

If you want to learn the facts about Valerie Carter's considerable success as a solo performer, background vocalist and songwriter, don't ask her. Oh, sure, she'll tell you that she's worked with James Taylor as a background singer dating back to 1975. She'll probably admit that she's recorded and toured over the years with a sparkling list of artists, among them Jackson Browne, Lowell George, Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles, to name but a few. If you ask, she might own up, rather reluctantly, to having written Judy Collins's 1973 hit "Cook With Honey" and to her association as a songwriter with Browne, George and others. But Valerie Carter, who's probably one of the most congenial -- and modest -- people you'll ever meet, really prefers to direct attention away from herself. Refreshingly lacking an oversized ego in a business where divas are a dime a dozen, she marvels at how everything that's happened professionally has been "completely mind-blowing" to her.

Valerie's career began when she was a teenager, and success came early. With friends Jon Lind and Richard Hovey, she formed a group called Howdy Moon. The trio signed with A&M, which released their 1974 recording, Howdy Moon, produced by Lowell George (Little Feat). After Howdy Moon disbanded, Lowell George co-produced (with George Massenburg and Bob Irwin) Valerie's first solo album, Just A Stone's Throw Away (Columbia, 1977). Stone's Throw featured an all-star line-up of supporting players, including George, Linda Ronstadt, Earth, Wind and Fire's Maurice White, the Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian and singer Deniece Williams on backing vocals, Jackson Browne on piano and guitar, Toto's Jeff Porcaro on drums, and Little Feat's (and one-time James Taylor band member) Billy Payne on keyboards. The LP also contained three of Valerie's compositions, two of which were written with Lowell George.

A similarly stellar set of musicians joined Valerie on Wild Child, her second album (Columbia, 1978, produced by James Newton Howard) including Jeff Porcaro again on drums, singer/songwriter David Lasley on background vocals, Steve Lukather on guitar, Jim Horn on horn, and Steve Porcaro on synthesizer. Wild Child featured five of Valerie's songs (co-written with Newton Howard, Lukather, and Richard Bell).

In 1996, Valerie issued another solo recording, The Way It Is (Pony Canyon, produced by Mark Goldenberg and Eddie Offord), which featured backgrounds by James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Lyle Lovett, Phoebe Snow and her current fellow James Taylor backing vocalists David Lasley, Arnold McCuller and Kate Markowitz. The CD's songs were equally impressive and included "Love Needs a Heart," written by Valerie, Jackson Browne and Lowell George (a song that Browne performed on his Running on Empty record), and collaborations by Valerie with Goldenberg, Kevin Hunter, Tom Snow and Kathy Kurasch. Her last solo recording to date is Find A River (Pony Canyon, 1998), a superb five-song CD produced and arranged by Goldenberg.

Known for her powerfully soulful, smoky and sultry voice -- with a range that switches from childlike innocence to a bluesy wail, often all in the same song -- she has performed and/or recorded as a background singer with Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Don Henley, Nicolette Larson, Randy Newman, Neil Diamond, Aaron Neville, Diana Ross, Ringo Starr, Shawn Colvin, Glenn Frey, Jimmy Webb, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Anne Murray, Christopher Cross, Eddie Money, Al Kooper, Hoyt Axton, and Jimmy Webb, among many others.

In 1975, Valerie met James Taylor, and she sang on Gorilla's "Angry Blues" and In the Pocket's "Family Man" and "Money Machine." (That's Valerie intoning the distinctive "money" in the middle of the latter song.) She has toured steadily with JT since 1990 and has also been featured on his last three albums (New Moon Shine, James Taylor Live and Hourglass).

Valerie's tremendous musical talent is matched by her personal charm. Friendly and warm, easygoing, candid and blessed with a wry and gently self-deprecating sense of humor, she would make a great best friend.

Our September 1999 interview -- accompanied by the chirping of birds in the trees surrounding her lovely, placid home -- was filled with non-stop giggles and guffaws. Despite her reticence to stand in the limelight, Valerie Carter gave graciously of her time and painted a full, rich picture of her life as a singer/songwriter. Here are excerpts from our conversation.

LAURA STEGMAN: Tell me how you got started as a singer and a musician.

VALERIE CARTER: I don't really know, other than the fact that my high school years were kind of that "folky, outside agitator thang." I didn't really even know what some of the politics were about. My way of getting things out was just to sing it, so it started out pretty innocently. I wasn't brought up as a singer. I wasn't honed or taught or anything. As a matter of fact, I was pretty shy about it, so my parents didn't really know -- or neither did I -- that's what I wanted to do until I was about 18.

LS: And what happened?

VC: Well, my teenage years were pretty strange. Probably everybody's teenage years were pretty strange (laughs). I left home -- my parents were frantic -- and I went and stayed with my cousin in New York City. I grew up in the South in small towns, if you can even call them towns, and I'd never been to a big city in my life. I looked in the Village Voice for work, and I found this waitress-singer thing in the Village. I would do folk music sets with this Iranian guy, and in between I would serve meals while these belly dancers came out. I did that for about seven or eight months, and I learned how to write a little bit. Then I hitchhiked across country with some friends -- because that's what you did then -- and we wound up in San Francisco and started playing coffeehouses.

LS: Did you just sing or did you play an instrument?

VC: I played the guitar. Really badly. Really lightly, and I sang very loudly.

LS: and VC: (laughter)

LS: You played stuff you wrote, or other people's things?

VC: A little bit of each. I would do my own songs at places where I figured people were a little more looped.

LS: and VC: (laughter)

VC: Anyway, I lived in this really sweet, very nice little commune in Loginitas, California, and one of the members of that commune was Jon Lind. We had a little group called "Howdy Moon" about a million years ago. There were three of us, and we moved to Los Angeles and got a deal on A&M.

LS: What kind of music did Howdy Moon do?

VC: It was self-written, with really integral harmonies. It was very bizarre, honestly, and not that great, but pretty good for teenagers, I guess.

LS: So that must have been exciting to have had a record deal!

VC: It was very, very exciting. It might have been even a little "too much too soon" sort of thing, because it definitely blew my mind. We played the Troubadour in L.A. for our big showcase. It was great.

LS: What year was that?

VC: Probably '74, I'm thinking.

LS: Wow, so that was the heyday of that sort of scene at the Troubadour.

VC: Yeah, absolutely. It's amazing who could have been seeing us in those days! Then we recorded our album, and A&M just hated it. So we made the album again, and they released it. It was our first and our last record

LS: and VC: (laughter)

LS: And did you play anywhere other than Los Angeles?

VC: We did, but we literally hitchhiked to our gigs. There wasn't much tour support, obviously. We slept on friends' floors, and we would do a lot of colleges, so we would always get invited to sleep in various dorms. That was basically how we existed. And we did it for just the love of what we were doing, and because we were young, and because we could.

Then, Richard [Hovey, Howdy Moon's third member] decided the music business wasn't for him. Plus, I think we wanted to figure out what would happen if we were on our own. I think all three of us wanted to go our separate ways musically for just a little while. I'm sorry that we never reunited for something later on after we had learned a little about life and music.

LS: At this point in your life, did you know that you wanted to be a singer?

"Just A Stone's Throw Away"

VC: Yeah, all indicators pointed in that direction quite strongly. I hadn't taken a great deal of interest in school. Music came so naturally, and everything else in my life was a fight, and a real, real difficult struggle. One side of my brain is functioning -- my music side -- and the rest of me is trying to do the best I can. So I felt that from the biggest things -- like God and all the wonderful things that kept snowballing and happening -- to very small moments, they all pointed towards me really seeking a firm career. And yet, I was still learning. The whole thing was like learning on the job.

"Wild Child"

I owe a great deal of everything that happened to Jon [Lind] and to my manager, Bob Cavallo. He managed Laura Nyro, the Lovin' Spoonful, Little Feat. He handled this "candy store" full of amazingly talented people, very nice people, who were very willing to help out somebody who obviously had some talent but wasn't honed at all. Like Maurice White of Earth Wind & Fire, and just a really interesting conglomerate of people. They were all there for me, some in small ways that still were huge to me, and some in very large ways. They just gave a hundred percent of themselves so I could kind of find my way.

The connection with Little Feat was immediate. [Little Feat leader] Lowell [George], who was my mentor, introduced me to Jackson [Browne], and the three of us started writing together. We had a really good ride of writing and doing some records together, and that was a great thing for me. Lowell co-produced my first record.

LS: Did he put the band together for you?

VC: Well, what we did was -- and I've never done it since in quite the same way with quite as much gusto -- we had a "wish list" of anybody who was our idol on any instrument, and they played on that record. EVERYBODY, we just didn't miss anybody. It's an amazing bunch of people.

LS: Tell me about how you met Lowell.

VC: Well Lowell was [managed by] Bob Cavallo, he introduced us. And Lowell was always so curious about anybody and their music and what they were up to. And, honestly, I've looked back at some of the stuff I did, and I just had so much innocence and such a lack of understanding of who I was. And my voice is kind of small, you know, real shy, and I don't even know why he took up his time with me. I really don't know. I look back on it and think it was so incredibly brave of him. And if he saw something, I wasn't aware of it.

I think part of what happened for me is that I felt like I was going to get "found out" back then. I was thinking, "I can't really do this, but here I am and these people are so talented and wonderful, and I'm just sort of coasting on their heels." But then I look back and I think, well why would they have worked with me, and I try to feel "validated" (laughs).

LS: But don't you think everybody feels that way?

VC: I think so, I do. I think we all battle that in one way or another. But it kind of -- I have to say -- got the best of me for a little while. And then it was okay.

LS: So Just A Stone's Throw Away was in 1977, and your second album, Wild Child, was in 1978. How were these records received? Did you tour and perform?

VC: The first one was really amazing. Out of all of them it got the most attention and landed me in the most interesting places. One of them was opening for the Eagles in Europe.

LS: WOW!

VC: I know, it was really a big time in my life. Too big probably. It just seemed like it kept happening very, very fast. I really didn't know what I was doing. It felt great to be onstage, but, I'm telling you, I wasn't up to it. I didn't have it together enough to be doing those kinds of shows. But I also did little clubs and theatres which I enjoyed very much.

LS: I understand that you wrote the Judy Collins hit song "Cook with Honey."

VC: Yeah (laughs modestly).

LS: That's a really famous song!

VC: I know! (additional modest laughter.)

LS: Did you write it by yourself?

VC: I did. Two chords on the guitar. I wrote it while I was living in that commune.

LS: And how did it reach Judy Collins?

VC: Well, I went to a barbecue at her house on Fire Island, and we hit it off immediately. I didn't tell her that I was an aspiring singer or anything, but at some point, we walked into her music room. And there were guitars hanging all over her wall, beautiful guitars, beautiful guitar straps, and pianos everywhere. And she was all full of light and kindness.

She sat down and played me a few things, and I was openly weeping. She asked if I knew anything, and I said, "Well, I know this one song." And I'm sure my tongue was sort of hanging out as I was trying to play these two chords, which I could BARELY do. I got the song out, and I felt totally awkward and embarrassed. But when I looked up, SHE was weeping.

LS: Woah!

VC: It just completely shocked me, and I was so appreciative. That was a HUGE moment in my life. And I went away and thanked her for the most wonderful time. About six months went by, and she called and said, "Would you mind if I do your song?"

LS: Would you mind???

LS: and VC: (laughter)     [ Hear A Clip From Collins' Version ]

VC: So there you go. And that's what gave people the idea that I was a songwriter, by the way (laughs).

LS: You wrote "Love Needs a Heart" with Lowell and Jackson. What else did you write as a trio?

VC: Well not too much that got a lot of public interest or went on anybody else's record. Mostly it was just a big learning process. There were bits and pieces [of songs] that to this day I still have some desire to work on. It's just really hard to do. I miss Lowell so much all the time, still. [George passed away in 1979]. His family and I are very close, his wife is like a best friend, and his daughter is a wonderful, wonderful singer. So I feel close to him in some ways, and in other ways I just want him to show up with his guitar.

I've never been a great writer. I've always needed my friends to complete anything. But when I first started, I was literally hit over the head with the idea that I had to be a writer in order to be a singer, and so I tried to live up to it and I continue to do so. Sometimes it's fruitful, and sometimes it's a waste of your valuable time (laughs).

LS: Did you write any other songs that people would know?

VC: No, I think those two are it (laughs).

LS: Well that's not bad.

VC: I'm not prolific like David [Lasley] (laughs).

Next on Page 2 - "Meeting James Taylor"

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