Lacie Carpenter — Firecracker with a fiddle!

Story by Billy Keith Bucher, Scene In Town staff writer; Photos are courtesy

NOTES FROM BILLY:  Getting to write about people and their music is a blessing. The best thing about it is that you learn so much about the artist and new musicians. Maybe one of the best things of all is when people come at you out of the blue, whether walking down the street or, as in my case, when you are up on the stage. We were recently playing a jam session at The Forge (in Ben Wheeler) and all of a sudden three women entering the club; one of these gals was holding a guitar case. At the break, she came up and asked if she could sit in with us. She told us her name was Lacie Carpenter and that she had played down at the Edom Art Festival during the afternoon.

Above all, Lacie Carpenter is a genuine firecracker! This is followed closely by the fact that she is also an intense and dedicated fiddler who studies and picks up inspirations from her favorite artists.

Lacie opened her guitar case (at the jam session) and pulled out a nice-looking guitar and then sat down and began to play. Her playing was strong and forthright and straight forward. Her first song was a brisk tune and her fingers flew over the strings. On the mellower songs, she exhibited craftmanship and direction. After a couple of songs, she smiled at us (guys in the band) said, “Just a minute.” She headed over to their table and came back with a beautiful violin!

Lacie ran through a series of songs with the band. By the end of the night, I asked her if she would come back in two or three weeks to do an interview for “Scene in Town.” She kept talking. I kept waiting for her to explode in a cool sort of way. Her whole body seemed to be filled with energy.

“I was born in Dallas,” Lacie began two weeks later when we met back at The Forge. “and then we moved to Tyler when I was about four. So I guess that Tyler is like my home town.” She smiled, paused, and looked down at her hands. “I have been playing violin for around 18 years now, classically trained in music education; but at age 15, I started to fiddle and I knew that fiddling was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I consider myself a fiddler/singer/songwriter. That is kind of like what I go by now. Beside violin, I play the guitar and mandolin. I have my degree in music education and violin performance. I recently got my Masters in Psychology.

“I learn a lot from my influences,” Lacie mused quietly amid the table talk that Saturday evening. I guess my biggest influences are Eileen Ives, Scotty Stoneman and Johnny Gimble. One thing I learned from Johnny Gimble, for instance, was that if you ever messed up on one of his songs, you’d better play what you played wrong the second time around so people will think that you played it that way on purpose!”

She laughed as the waitress brought our order as if she, herself, were playing a Gimble song. It is a touch of irony that he got some of his fame from playing at the fiddler contests each spring in nearby Athens.

“Once I am board certified in music therapy, I’d like to open an all-inclusive arts studio that includes many alternative therapy practices like music, art, drama, and dance, and also equine therapy. I would really like to teach that way again!

“And I’d like to perform like Eileen Ives, whom I saw for the first time I went to Ireland. She was incredible,” Carpenter continued.

“I’ve been playing in the Gladewater Opry with the Southern String Line for seven years now. I also do orchestra and theatre over at the middle school in Tyler. I taught for two years at four schools and then I went to Ireland and performed and taught for my studies over there before I came back. I was in nine different symphonies and even played in a rock-and-roll symphony with Led Zeppelian- and AC/DC- heavy-metal kinds of things, but my passion still lies with bluegrass and country.

“I’m just a fiddler,” she said proudly, “and I’ll always stay a fiddler.”

She gave me a big smile like the ones seen in her YouTubes. I’ll be going to the Gladewater Opry in the next couple of weeks and can’t wait to see her up closer and personal. After all, Lacie Carpenter is rather like a dynamic bomb waiting to go off and I want to be around for that!

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