Carlene Carter

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Purchase a bundle of 3, 4, or 5 Indoor Performance Series concerts and save 20%. This discount can be applied when tickets are purchased directly through our Pick 3, Pick 4, or Pick 5 bundles.

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Carlene Carter

A World of Music Series

Date & Price

Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 8:00 pm

Exhibition Hall


Reserved Seating: $35

Gardens Preferred and Gardens Premium Members: $30*

Ticket includes all-day Gardens Admission.


Sold Out.

Become a Part of the Gardens

Experience exquisite Gardens that elevate the art of horticulture, performances that inspire, and programs that enlighten, all amid the relaxing beauty of Longwood.

Buy a Bundle, Save 20%

Purchase a bundle of 3, 4, or 5 Indoor Performance Series concerts and save 20%. This discount can be applied when tickets are purchased directly through our Pick 3, Pick 4, or Pick 5 bundles.

Please note: This discount cannot be combined with any other promo code or Member / Innovator discount.

Longwood Debut

The daughter of June Carter Cash and country star Carl Smith, and stepdaughter of Johnny Cash, Carlene Carter has been releasing music for more than four decades and is the physical embodiment of The Carter Family in the 21st century. Her most recent album release is Carter Girl, a collection of Carter family songs and originals honoring her ancestors and confirming her proud place among them.

Listen to Carlene Carter

More about Carlene Carter

Carter started her career singing with The Carter Family at age 17. With the 1978 release of her self-titled debut album, she established herself on the edgier end of the country music spectrum, having recorded it in England with Graham Parker’s band The Rumour. When Maybelle Carter died later that fall, Chet Flippo wrote in Rolling Stone that she “lived to see her granddaughter Carlene merge Nashville with contemporary rock and roll.” 

Her third album, Musical Shapes, still often cited as being ahead of its time for its blend of country and rock, was recorded with her then husband and producer Nick Lowe and his group Rockpile in 1980. Making their home in London, Carter spent a year on the West End stage in the musical Pump Boys and Dinettes, then filled in for her aunt Anita one night when The Carter Family played Wembley with the Johnny Cash show. She ended up touring with them for the next two years, until she felt ready to go out on her own again, encouraged by Dwight Yoakam, who told her, “Carlene, there is a place for you in country music.”

Working with producer Howie Epstein (of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers), Carter became Nashville’s homecoming queen of 1990 when her rockin’ I Fell In Love topped the country singles and video charts. The album was named one of the year’s 10 best by Time, People, and Stereo Review, and she received Grammy Award nominations for Country Music’s Top New Female Vocalist and Best Country Vocal Performance, Female. Her dynamic personality made her a natural as VH1’s first country video hostess with her own daily hour, The Carlene Carter Show, and she had another smash hit single and video with Every Little Thing, from Little Love Letters, in 1993.

Producing her next album, Little Acts of Treason, in 1995, Carter got her dad out of retirement for a duet of his hit Loose Talk (#1 for 7 weeks in 1955), and included The Carter Family and Cash on The Winding Stream. Back on television with a series of specials for TNN, Carlene Carter: Circle of Song featured many friends and family members; and she made history with two other famous Nashville daughters, Lorrie Morgan and Pam Tillis, on what USA Today called “the first all-female major country tour” in 1996. Her first “best of” collection, Hindsight 20/20, with 20 songs spanning 20 years of her recording career, was also released that year.

European tours and appearances on other albums continued, including a Waylon Jennings tribute covering his anthem I’ve Always Been Crazy, but Carter’s life was devastated by the deaths of longtime partner Epstein, mother June, stepfather Cash, and sister Rosey Nix, all in 2003. Her performance of Jackson with Brooks & Dunn at the Johnny Cash Memorial Tribute Concert (which The Tennessean named “the show’s emotional highlight”), led to Carter being cast as her mom in Wildwood Flowers: The June Carter Story, a 2005 Nashville stage musical about June’s early years with Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters. The show ended with Carter’s emotional tribute to her grandmother and Rosey on Me and the Wildwood Rose segueing into Will The Circle Be Unbroken. Carter continued to honor Nix on the title track to her next CD, Stronger, produced by old friend and musical collaborator John McFee (of The Doobie Brothers and Southern Pacific) in 2008.

Carter’s songs have continued to be heard again, as It Takes One To Know Me, her long-lost birthday present to her stepdad when she was 19, closed the Johnny Cash box set The Legend in 2005; and Easy From Now On, first recorded by Emmylou Harris in 1978, was included on the 2007 #1 Crazy Ex-Girlfriend CD by Miranda Lambert.

More recently, she’s been touring with John Mellencamp following her appearance in the road company of Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, the musical play he wrote with author Stephen King. That collaboration led to a new joint effort Sad Clowns & Hillbillies. She duets with Mellencamp on the album, sings backup, and plays guitar and autoharp. Her songwriting skills are heard on Indigo Sunset which she wrote with Mellencamp and on Damascus Road, her own composition.

Find out more on her website.

*Gardens Preferred and Gardens Premium Members receive access to the Pre-sale. If you are eligible, you have received a discount code and Pre-sale access code via direct mail or email from Longwood Gardens.

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