Carlene says she’s been clean ever since. “I’m here,” she says, as if offering up a prayer of thanks.
Carter began her healing process in earnest with the help of a play and a man.
She met the man, Joe Breen, through mutual friends in Los Angeles while still going through recovery in 2004. “I was absolutely broke,” she says — so broke that she couldn’t even afford cigarettes, but suddenly she started finding $5 bills in her back pocket so she could buy Marlboros. She thought God might be putting the money there until she figured out God might not be concerned with supporting her nicotine habit.
Turns out Joe Breen, a Los Angeles television personality and all-around renaissance man, was slipping that money in there. He was also slowly slipping into her heart.
“He’s a really big part of why my life is so much more balanced and on track right now,” she says. And she gives him a huge amount of credit for centering her music. “I was questioning whether I should stick with music or not. But Joe was always saying, ‘Won’t you go write a song?’ or ‘Won’t you go play your piano?'”
Many of the songs on Stronger were inspired by Breen, particularly “Bring Love”, a road song in which the narrator sings triumphantly of finding a love who tells her that love is all she needs to bring when they escape together, traveling from California to Tennessee.
Not long after she began dating Breen, they did make that journey east when Carter was offered the part of her mother in the musical Wildwood Flowers, based on June’s days of working with the Carter Family. Carlene saw that it was a great way to pay homage to her mother, whose legacy she is determined to carry forward with grace and dignity. She did not realize it would be such a major part of her healing process.
“I felt her around in a big way,” Carlene says, beaming. “It did help me with grieving her; I never got through a performance without crying. It was overwhelming to me the people who came and how much they loved her.
“I felt like I needed people to remember her and what she did as a performer, so I tried to be as true to her as possible. I didn’t want it to be me up there, acting like my mother. I wanted to show them what she was like.”
Taking the part was made easier by the presence of her cousin, Lorrie Davis Bennett, the daughter of Anita Carter, who also portrayed her own mother for the show. Carter says they had always had a special bond but that she and Bennett grew closer after the deaths of their mothers.
“She did the most remarkable job…the play was a great healing time for her,” Davis says of Carlene. “She was back just as strong and determined as ever, and it was obvious.”
Carter received great notices for the play, and when it closed, she decided to stay in Tennessee. She and Breen had found a nice place (they married in early 2006), and she was glad to be nearer her aging father, after the 2005 death of her beloved stepmother. “People ask me if Daddy’s still alive and I say, ‘Hell yes.’ He’s 80 but looks great, just a little wrinkled.”
Shortly thereafter she began work on Stronger, which was recorded at the Cash Family Cabin, where she had previously worked on her mother’s last album. “It was very healing to record it there,” she says. “It was emotional but it was good, too.” She kept the album in the family when it came time to pick a producer, settling on her younger stepbrother, John Carter Cash.
“Carlene was as creative and true as I’ve ever seen her, and her vision came alive,” Cash says. “Working with her was reminiscent of my times with my mother in the studio. Carlene has become more like Mom in many ways through the last few years. She was charming and joyous…it was enlightening.”
Stronger is currently available on Carter’s website and at her live shows. She’s been in discussions with a couple of labels but says if they don’t agree with her goals for the album, she might just put it out herself. In the meantime, she has no doubts that music will keep on sustaining her, providing a resource for contemplation, confession, and all-around catharsis. And, she says, she’s still focusing on her recovery, trying to get stronger. “It’s an ongoing project, keeping your life together,” she acknowledges.
Her way of doing it is the tried and true method: one day at a time. No matter what people think of Carter, just about everybody will agree on one thing: She’s strong.
“I remember one time, Mama told me, ‘Carlene, you must be the strongest person I ever knew,'” she says, smiling, proud. She told her mother that she didn’t want to be strong. “I said, ‘Mama, I want to just curl up and cry,’ and Mama just said, ‘Well, you can’t.'”
Carter lets out that boisterous laugh, but it’s guarded now, a bit measured, somewhat softened by her awe for the past, or maybe even her hopes for the future.
“That’s how she brought us up, you know. To suck it up, to take that negative energy and turn into something productive. So that’s what I went and did.”
Contributing editor Silas House is a novelist who lives in Eastern Kentucky, not far from the Carter Fold in Virginia.
