[2] After the formation of Beat Circus in 2002, Carpenter began composing a "Weird American Gothic" trilogy of albums, starting with Dreamland, released on the Cuneiform label in 2008, a song cycle loosely based on the Coney Island theme park of the same name.

Boy from Black Mountain followed in 2009 with Southern folk songs inspired by his son and his father's life growing up as a farmer in the Florida Panhandle.

[3] In 2012 Carpenter began collaborating with the Berkeley Repertory Theater on a musical loosely based on Herbert Asbury's Gold Rush saga The Barbary Coast.

[4] In 2006 Carpenter was hired as the musical director for a run of vaudeville shows at an historic theater in Boston, then celebrating its 90th anniversary.

The band recorded their debut The Far End of the World with Rafi Sofer at Q Division Studios in Somerville, Massachusetts and mixed with Craig Schumacher in Tucson, Arizona.