Singer-Songwriter Megan Cary Brings Folk-Rock To Horsham

HORSHAM, PA -- The Scatter Joy Center for the Arts will host a night of live music with Philadelphia area singer-songwriter Meghan Cary on June 3, they announced in a news release.

Cary, a veteran musician, thespian and playwright, will perform with her husband Peter Farrell. The art center’s resident musician Anthony Viscounte will open the show.

A stage actress-turned-accidental-musician, Cary has been writing songs for more than 20 years. After working around the globe as an actor and voiceover artist, the Erdenheim troubadour was led to her debut as a performing singer-songwriter through the path of devastating heartbreak. Her first album, “New Shoes,” released in 1998, was penned after the sudden death of her fiancé Matthew Black, according to the news release.

“Tragedy can radically alter our story, and owning our story can radically alter our lives. Many of my songs tell parts of (that) story,” she says.

Yet those very first songs she wrote were never meant for anyone beyond Matthew’s family and a few close friends.

“I picked up his guitar and figured out how to play it. I didn’t know any cover songs start to finish, so I made up my own. I had no intention of becoming a musician, but when the dust settled after that huge derailment in my life, I was on a completely new track that led me to where I am today,” says Cary.

“New Shoes” earned her a Critic’s Choice Award from Billboard Magazine.

Cary has been pouring her heart, humor, and life wisdom into the stories she shares through song ever since, including her most recent release “Sing Louder: The Festival EP.”

“Everyone writes for a different audience and for different reasons. I like to write songs that tell a story. And I like it to be a story that might make you tap into your own story long enough to acknowledge and own it,” she says. “But I also love to get people up on their feet dancing.”

Just last year, Cary tasked herself with the ambitious goal of writing one new song a week. She penned just under 52.

“I got some pretty good songs out of it that I’ve added to my shows and recorded,” she says of the challenge. “But more importantly, the exercise took the onus off of the songwriting process. I had to write a song a week, so I couldn’t be precious about it. I didn’t have the time to angst over writing the perfect song — I simply wrote a song every week. Sure, I wrote some pretty bad songs along the way. But by allowing myself to write those, I found my way to a few gems I’m proud to have penned.”

Several of them have made their way into a new musical she’s currently collaborating on and workshopping. Married now and a mom of two, Cary returned to theater in 2014, after taking a break to raise her kids. She played Jodie Foster and several other roles in the New City Stage Company production of “Hinckley,” and that same year premiered her one-woman play “On the Way to the Waterfall,” about becoming a singer-songwriter, at the Boulder Fringe Festival.

“They really have fed each other,” she says of her dual careers. “My years in theater have given me the gift of confidence onstage. I feel at home on the bright side of the footlights, and I am so grateful for that. But more importantly, acting is about connecting — with my own needs and wants, with other actors in the scene, with the audience — and that is what I feel sharing music is all about.”

Opening for Cary will be Horsham singer-songwriter Anthony Viscounte, a Berklee College of Music graduate and founder of the Viscounte Academy of Music.

The event starts at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, June 3. The Center is located on 305 Horsham Road. Admission is free.