One More Thing

Fiddler Fred Carpenter released One More Thing on 27 January 2025. It has twelve tracks, nine of them songs with Carpenter singing lead and three of them instrumentals: “Tee It Up,” “Waltz for April” and “La Satina.” Carpenter plays fiddle, mandolin and viola, with Tim May on guitar, Eric Frey on bass and Taylor Carpenter on drums, and a long list of guests joins him on the vocals. Tim O’Brien sings on “Sultans of Swing” and “Home from the Forest”; Vince Gill and Larry Cordle on “Why You Been Gone So Long”; Alison Krauss on “Love Has No Pride”; Sara Watkins on “I Will”; and Ricky Skaggs and Mike Rogers on “Old Train.” Suzy Bogguss and Kathy Mattea share another track, Gill returns on “Toy Heart,” and Mattea closes the album with Carpenter on “If I Needed You.”

Carpenter’s own career goes back to the early 1980s. He moved to California in 1980 and joined the Tony Rice Unit, toured with Rice for three years and recorded two albums with him, Still Inside and Backwaters. He then spent three years with the Dillards, and in 1987 joined Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band for two years. From 1989 to 1992 he toured with several artists, among them George Strait. In 2000 he received an IBMA award and a Grammy nomination for his fiddle work on Murder on Music Row, recorded with Larry Cordle and Lonesome Standard Time. He has run The Violin Shop in Nashville since 1988, and in 2008 he and guitarist Tim May formed the duo Carpenter & May, whose first CD gave Carpenter his first lead vocals on record.