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We've got a photograph in our family room of Carolyn Arends mugging (for the camera) and hugging (my sons, then about 8 and 10). She is beaming in the photo, the kind of warm smile that says, "Yeah, I'm happy, and I'm not ashamed to show it." People have called Arends a Pollyanna because of her sunny outlook—and music. Ah, but here comes a not-so-sunny side with an album of darker songs and harder times, a self-produced CD Arends has fittingly titled Pollyanna's Attic. Sure, she's done dark songs before, but never a whole album. And there's still a thread of divine hope running through these new tunes. But this Attic is clearly littered with old trunks containing varying degrees of pain, doubt, and cynicism—but never despair. There is always hope. Join us for this meandering conversation with the award-winning folk singer, who discusses her "grumpy songs," her winter of discontent, and her new-found willingness to occasionally rub some people the wrong way—as long as she's speaking the truth.

You're known for your sunny music. So, where'd you get the idea for making a disc of what you're calling "grumpy songs"?

Carolyn Arends I got the idea on January 1st of this year. I was thinking about a bunch of songs that had never really fit with any of my other records. I'm not really a Pollyanna, but I have been called one because there is kind of a relentless hopefulness to my work. But every once in a while I would write a song that would go, not to a hopeless place, but a little bit darker place, but it just wouldn't feel like it fit with the other material on my records. Eventually I had this group of songs that were the ones that got away. I thought, I should just put them all on the same record.

I told a friend I wanted to call it Pollyanna's Attic, and she said, "That's perfect because what you put in the attic is stuff you don't want to deal with but can't throw away." And I thought, Oh there's some truth to that. But I'm getting feedback that it's not as dark as I think it is. I don't do dark very well.

Your liner notes say these songs are about "the kind of hope that shows up more in the cracks and fissures in our lives than in our pinnacle moments." Any personal examples?

Arends The song "Not Alone" stems from a true story. A few years ago, a good friend of mine had a niece murdered by her mom—his sister-in-law—on the first day of school when she should have gone to kindergarten. It was an unimaginable kind of tragedy.

For about three weeks after the murder, anything anybody said to me about it made me mad. There just wasn't anything you could say that seemed acceptable. I remember trying to wrestle it through and thinking, You can talk about the theology of "Everything that's meant for harm, God can ultimately use for good."But right now all you can say in a situation like that is that you're not alone, and we have a God who knows what it's like to lose a child. So when I sing that song, it's a gut-level-when-everything-else-is-stripped-away kind of hope, that there is nothing that we can go through—even the most unimaginable, horrible thing—alone.

Sounds like you were upset when you wrote that song. Can you write a good song when you're ticked off, or do you have to be in a good frame of mind?

Arends There are a lot of artists—and this may be more in the mainstream—who intentionally sabotage their lives so that they'll have good material. There are artists who say they can't write when they're happy. That has not been the case for me. Dispositionally, I'm pretty sunny, pretty glass-half-full. And I really do believe that the first and most beautiful thing our faith gives us is hope in all circumstances.

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