Between singing songs and playing the keyboard last night at the Mill, 120 E. Burlington, Vanessa Carlton talked about being a new mother, relationships with her family, wine, and more.
Carlton is on tour promoting her album Liberman, which came out just over a week ago. Playing in the Mill’s dimly lit back room, filled with fans enjoying dinner and singing along to her self-explained “feel-good” style, listening totally engaged to her explain the background of most of the songs, she sang from both old albums and new.

Throughout the show, Carlton – dressed in all black – sat behind a keyboard and a lit candle, switching between taking sips of red wine and from a water bottle, while talking to the crowd.

She started by singing a few older songs, one of them being “White Houses.” She introduced the song with a story of how her brother, who is 10 years younger than her, was taken aback when the song first came out in 2004. He was young and in high school at the time, and felt the song about a character losing her virginity was too personal to hear about his sister.

But recently, Carlton said, she explained to her brother with ease that the character was made up and the song was written with the help of other writers.

Most songs she sang were introduced with stories like that one. Another story included an explanation to her album title. Liberman is her grandfather’s original given name, before he changed it because he thought he’d succeed as a painter more-so with a less ethnic name.

One of his oil paintings is of a woman, painted in three different ways. The painting is brightly colored, and Carlton said all of the songs written for the new album were created while looking at that painting.

This story preceeded “Operator,” which is also featured on the main page of her website. Carlton loves her wine, apparently. Between songs she made a few comments, including “I didn’t pour enough wine tonight, but it’s alright, I’ll sip small,” and suggesting a goblet of wine after she finished her first glass.

After the show, she was headed back to a hotel to be with her 9-month-old daughter. She talked about her, how she wrote a lullaby for her, “River”.

Being a mother, she said, it’s been hard to remember lyrics to old nursery rhymes she once knew. So instead, she sings her own song. “This one works,” Carlton told the crowd.

Her last song before an encore drew a big response from the crowd, including cheers and cell phones aimed at the stage. Carlton introduced it as a song she wrote when she was 16 years old in ballet school, skipping class, but it turned out alright, she said.

“This is me a 35-year-old singing from my 16-year-old self, but we’re still in the same place,” Carlton said.