For singer-songwriter Bo Armstrong, hearing Mary Chapin Carpenter's '90s classic "He Thinks He'll Keep Her," a song about a young woman who realizes her work and sacrifices have been taken for granted by her husband, was a turning point. While listening to the song in the backseat of his dad's car, Armstrong was struck by the power of storytelling through music.
Armstrong puts his own spin on the song on his forthcoming album if your tired heart is aching (out Nov. 18).
"My dad introduced me to Mary Chapin Carpenter when I was about 7 or 8, and this song, in particular, has lingered with me for decades," Armstrong tells Wide Open Country. "I was pretty young, but I remember listening to it in his car and recognizing a lot of the scenes that were playing out. The PTA, doctors and dentists, dad's suitcase —as a kid with a dad who worked and a superhero mom who held the house together, it all seemed so familiar. There were things I didn't follow, but that actually encouraged me to ask questions —I even remember asking my dad what 'mother's lace' meant and what 'typing pools' were. With one song, music went from filling dead air in the backseat of my dad's car to telling stories that I could try to decipher and find meaning in. Ultimately, this is a song about a woman with the courage to leave —not because of any particular wrongdoing, just the realization the love had run out. Thankfully, my parents are still together, so I've never related to it in that way. But I've been with my wife for 14 years, and this song, in all of its hope and sadness, inspires me to never take her for granted.
I think this song deserves a bit of a renaissance in today's climate, with gender roles slowly eroding for the better. My hope was that in giving it a male vocal, we could add another dimension to it —a sense of awareness or an admission of guilt. In my album's sequence, the cover precedes a song I wrote with Brian Douglas Phillips called 'Stranger In My Bed,' which in many ways serves as the apology we never got from the anonymous 'he' in 'He Thinks He'll Keep Her.'
At any rate, recording this song and placing it on the album just seemed like such a special way to honor an artist that I admire and a song that taught me so much about life and storytelling."
Forthcoming LP if your tired heart is aching, produced by Brian Douglas Phillips, is the follow-up to Armstrong's 2020 album Chasing Ballads.
