Multi-instrumentalist Charlotte Carrivick has discovered that it takes a strong woman to balance motherhood with being a touring performer. This flatpick guitarist from South West England proves it’s possible to juggle the dual demands of caring for others while crafting a creative life around music.
“I would say being a woman in bluegrass, or music in general, has its advantages and disadvantages,” Carrivick said. “Certainly, over here, there's a big movement – at least with festival organizers – to ensure a strong female presence in programming.”
However, it gets difficult when a performer becomes a mom. According to Carrivick, other women who choose a life in the business understand this balancing act well.
“The brilliant flatpicker/singer/songwriter Courtney Wis putting out an album of songs that focuses on this,” Carrivick said of the introspective folk artist inspired by appreciating life's simple beauties. For sure, children fit the bill.
As Carrivick explains, women often overextend themselves if they’re not careful.
“There's no denying the difficulties in continuing a career that demands relatively long periods of time away,” she explained. “With the current fashion for social media and the importance of keeping a constant presence going, even the shortest maternity leave period is hard to come back from.”
She said if you choose to be the primary caregiver after maternity leave is over, “you have to factor in traveling around with a baby and childcare. Then, beyond that, the commitments just stack up, and it gets to be really hard to find time for music, let alone any of the background admin that goes with choosing to make it your living.”
“That said,” she summarized, “I wouldn't swap my children for anything, and I certainly can't think of a good solution!”
It seems, however, that Carrivick IS making it work. She’s active as a solo artist, teacher and member of several other bands. Although one of the groups she used to perform with – Midnight Skyracer – has been on hiatus since the pandemic, she still performs as half of The Carrivick Sisters, a duo including her twin sister.
“Our music is very much influenced by bluegrass, but I would never call it that…I play the wrong kind of banjo, for one thing!” she explained. “A lot of it is original songs based on old stories from where we live in the South West of England. We've played together for as long as we've been playing so that always feels lovely and natural.”
She also appears in another duo where she presents mostly banjo work alongside fiddle player, Kieran Towers.
Carrivick’s work has reached a new height with the November 2024 release of her debut record, Sensible or Otherwise. Aiming to be reminiscent of “great 80s and 90s instrumental albums,” she said the tracks are influenced by work such as Béla Fleck's “Drive,” Matt Flinner's “The View From Here” and John Reischman's “Up In the Woods.” The 12-track record is all-instrumental and all-original.
“I got in touch with some of my favorite players over here in England, and we recorded with Josh Clark at Get Real Audio,” she said. “Josh has the best ear, is brilliant to work with, and his studio in a castle just happens to be ten minutes from my house.”
The record features musicians Evan Davies (mandolin), Kieran Towers (fiddle), Eleanor Wilkie (double bass), her sister, Laura Carrivick (dobro and fiddle), and her husband, John Breese (banjo).
Somehow, this woman of music finds time to fit into teaching.
“For the past few years, my teaching has been mostly in workshops and camps,” she said. One example is the Blue Ridge Guitar Camp in North Carolina, spearheaded by respected Grammy-winning session guitarist Bryan Sutton.
She also offers lessons for fiddle tunes for both guitar and clawhammer banjo, available through the Patreon platform.
Carrivick said her instruction technique centers on “the spirit of exploration.” To her, that means “taking a small idea and seeing where it might lead you.” The idea is that learning should be fun: “If you’re simply following notes in a book, you’ll get those wonderful moments of excitement far less often than you might by taking a simple phrase, playing around with it in as many ways as you can think of, and in doing that, finding some entirely new idea that may then lead to the next idea.”
Carrivick’s trajectory was informed and inspired by having a great experience with capable teachers. Her exceptional learning experience happened at Sore Fingers Summer School. Her teacher – and that of her twin sister as well – was Matt Flinner, who she said remains “a musical hero to this day.”
“As we were writing and singing songs together, it seemed sensible for one of us [sisters] to play guitar,” Carrivick reminisced. “Laura was primarily just playing fiddle at that point, and so it fell to me to learn to flatpick.”
“It's a music camp for bluegrass and old-time where they bring over some of the greats from the U.S. to teach for a week, and it's utterly brilliant,” she said. “My sister and I had our 14th birthday there, and that was probably the end of us doing anything sensible with our lives!”
Carrick’s comment is humorous, but she certainly proves it’s possible to live a “sensible” life as a “woman of bluegrass” if family and work are balanced with care.
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