Music
Press
This is a letter of testimonial tribute on behalf of Marshall Chapman, a graduate of Vanderbilt University, a songwriter, a performer, and a talented published author. In my view, she is one of the most interesting individuals whom I have ever met. I specifically asked her to allow me to write this letter because I believe that she would be a dynamic speaker to a number of audiences, but particularly to audiences comprised of university and college students. Over the 5 years I have known Marshall, I have seen her perform on a number of occasions, both musically and as a speaker…..
Her view of the world is one that should be heard, understood and enjoyed….
If I can provide further information, I am willing to do so.
Cordially,
Gordon Gee
Chancellor, Vanderbilt University
- VAnderbilt UNiversity Office of the Chancellor
When Marshall Chapman performed at Wofford College’s McMillan Theater, the place really rocked—with music, which was vintage Nashville at its most inspired; with laughter, prompted by Chapman’s own inimitable wit at its most mordant and inventive; and with the gamut of emotions you’d feel at a Deep South family reunion that tilts in all sorts of alarming directions before righting itself with the thought that you’d rather be part of what is taking pace than anything else you can think of. Marshall lays it all on the line, and, given the quality of the mind and spirit that she brings to the party, it’s a churlish, inert lump of self-obsessed imbecility that fails to respond. Her performance is brave in the medieval sense of the word, like a pennant snapping in the wind. And her voice is like a freight train on the other side of endless rows of tobacco waiting to be chopped. She’ll break your heart and rock your soul.
Benjamin Dunlap
President, Wofford College
- Wofford College Office of the President
"Her stirring new Mellowicious! is her first studio CD in nine years."
-Philadelphia Inquirer
"...a welcome return..."
–No Depression
"Don't be fooled by the title. She is, thankfully, as ornery as ever. As one track says: 'Trouble with a Capital T'"
–L.A. Daily News
"Another great record by one of the best there is."
–Todd Snider
"Damned if Marshall Chapman don't sound and write as good as she looks."
–Rodney Crowell
"Mellowicious! proves that Chapman still has it in spades."
–Vintage Guitar magazine
"When I hear Marshall Chapman, I feel panthers of grace rising around me; and this new record of hers is a new magic breeze for those panthers and me."
–Nick Tosches
- Tallgirl Records
Legendary country and rock singer/songwriter Chapman has seen many of her more than 250 songs ("Betty's Bein' Bad," "The Perfect Partner") made famous by other artists like Jimmy Buffett, while her own recording career never went beyond cult status. This wild and woolly memoir deserves to gain her a much wider audience than just her loyal fans. Structured as a series of essays about 12 of her songs "that have the best stories around them," this is a hilarious and entertaining look at life by a fascinating 40-something artist who is not afraid to admit that she wrote one of her favorite songs ("Rode Hard and Put Up Wet") after waking up "around noon facedown in my front yard-which was a vegetable garden-wearing nothing but my underpants." The rebellious child of an upper-middle-class family in South Carolina, Chapman moves from college life at Vanderbilt to Nashville in the early 1970s, "about when the ' 60s hit the South," just in time to be a part of the "outlaw" country music era along with Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson ("hell, back then, Willie didn't even bathe on a regular basis"), and she gives excellent insight into the rowdy ways of that much storied era. She also uses the creation of other songs to discuss everything from her "career of dating criminals" to her current sobriety with her true love, a man who wouldn't be fazed if Chapman chopped wood "with nothing on but a pair of men's boxer shorts." (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. - Publisher's Weekly
Don't be fooled by the title. She is, thankfully, as ornery as ever. As one track says: 'Trouble with a Capital T' - LA Daily News
AUSTIN, Texas -- I've been coming to the South By Southwest Music Conference for 17 of its 20 years and I can't remember a keynote address/interview more inspirational than that of Neil Young this morning.
Young was relaxed, funny and wise...
Another old pro getting a lot of attention here this week is Kris Kristofferson. He's been the subject of a film festival tribute, was interviewed on stage and is playing a couple of shows...
But things have gotten more insane than ever. Last night, there was a line a block long...this afternoon, the line at the New West Party was almost as long. That's not to say you won't get in the venues but it's trickier than it's ever been.
That is, unless you roll into a less-popular venue, as I did last night. Marshall Chapman was playing at BD Riley's Irish Pub and there was no line. A veteran singer/songwriter/rock 'n' roller, Chapman, who wrote a great autobiography was acerbic, funny and a great performer.
That's another SXSW moment, seeing a singer or band in top form.
- Lincoln, Nebraska Star Journal
MELLOWICIOUS!, the latest album on her own Tallgirl Records label opens with the optimistic 'Have A Little Faith', a gospel-based song with some great electric guitar. Really in the groove, Kim Morrison provides the backup vocals.
In the early 1990's Chapman found a cozy home as one of Jimmy Buffett's bunch and the influence rubs off on the infectious 'Isalnd Song II' and 'Bright Red Sunset'.
A great, mainly upbeat album that is well worth seeking out. 4* out of 4 * - Maverick Magazine
I’ve always felt that Marshall Chapman is a brilliant writer, and I’ve been following her career since her debut album, Me, I’m Feeling Free came out on Epic Records back in the mid-1970's.
I love her lyrics, her voice, guitar, and all around style. She’s an original. Before Chrissie Hynde, before Susan Tedeschi, Marshall was slingin’ a mean telecaster.
My all time favorite Chapman penned tune has got to be “Goodbye Little Rock and Roller” (also the title of her highly recommended by GRITZ memoir) but with the release of Mellowicious, I now have a close running second favorite in “Call The Lamas.” There are great songs and then there are those songs that are simply magic. Tunes channeled down from the heavens - main lined into the musical vein by a muse. This is one of those.
“Call the lamas/ I saw little Buddha in the checkout line in the grocery store today
Call the lamas/ He was sitting like a prince in the grocery cart with a perfect smile on his face. "
The whole album is filled with equally brilliant songs, including the tongue in cheek “I'm Just Pitiful That Way” and lyrically excellent songs” Have A Little Faith” and “Trouble With A Capital T,” not to mention the wonderfully uplifting sentiments of “I Love Everybody (I Love Everything).”
Marshall has been known to record other writers material, folks like the great Johnny Cash, but on Mellowicious, it’s all Marshall, every song written or co-written by the self labeled “Tall Girl.”
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that in this writer’s humble opinion, Mellowicious is Marshall Chapman’s finest work yet. Phone the neighbors. Wake the kids. Call the lamas. Between this and the new Kris Kristofferson epic, I can’t stop l listening long enough to review other CD’s. Says something about the quality of Marshall’s work. - Gritz Magazine
... her best record by a mile and a half, because she's not trying to prove anything--just putting her songs on the table in front of the perfect little rock and roll groove of her non-name band. The singing is relaxed and aware, the writing sharpest when it means to cut a little, as on "Bad Debt" (rhymes with "You haven't taken out the garbage yet") and "Betty's Bein' Bad ("She's not mad/She's just gettin' even/Betty's bein' bad/It's her way of leavin'"). May she glorify her Pignose amp forever. A- - Bob Christgau
she's a real smart gal who was raised to be a lady, and how she ended up in this godforsaken venue connects to the prison doctor she settled down with after a lost decade-plus of sleeping with guitarists and four years of sleeping alone. His love song is the only soggy moment on this half-retrospective half-showcase. Some of her references--jet sets, self-help books, money-making machines--seem beyond her captive audience's ken. But old charges like "Booze in Your Blood" and "Bad Debt" stick. And new ones like "Good-Bye Forever" and "Alabama Bad" leave no doubt that she still understands her great subject: why she didn't grow up to be a lady. A- - Bob Christgau
Discography
Me, I’m Feelin’ Free (Epic, 1977)
Jaded Virgin (Epic, 1978) Marshall (Epic, 1979)
Take It on Home (Rounder, 1982)
Dirty Linen (Tall Girl /Line import, 1987)
Inside Job (Tall Girl, 1991)
It’s About Time… (Island, 1995)
Love Slave (Island, 1996)
Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller (Tallgirl, 2003)
(Book companion CD)
Marshall Chapman - Live! at The Bitter End
(Tallgirl, 2004)
Mellowicious! (Tallgirl/Emergent/RED, 2006)
Books
Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller
(St. Martin’s Press, 2003 - hardcover)
(St. Martin’s Griffin, 2004 - paperback)
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
Marshall Chapman was born and raised in Spartanburg, South Carolina. One evening when she was seven years old, and her parents were out of town, Cora Jeter – the maid-turned-babysitter – took her purposefully by the hand and said, “Come on, child! Let’s go see what all the fuss is about. They say he white, but sing like he colored!” The year was 1956. “He” was Elvis Presley. The venue was Spartanburg’s Carolina Theater, where Jeter half-carried, half-pulled the tow-headed Chapman up two flights of stairs to the balcony reserved for “coloreds.”
“I felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz,” Marshall says. “I knew I was no longer in Kansas. It was hot and stuffy up there with everybody buzzing around. When Elvis came on, it was like an explosion. The whole place just shook. I…. you know how at birth babies bond with their mothers? Well, I held out and bonded with Elvis.”
A few years later, a friend’s older brother went away for the summer and left Marshall his Silvertone electric guitar. “I learned to play the bass riff from ‘What’d I Say’ (Ray Charles) before I ever played a chord. After that it was Chuck Berry’s ‘No Money Down.’ The first 45 I ever bought was ‘Poison Ivy’ by The Coasters. First LP: Stay with Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs.”
When it came time for college, Marshall chose Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Her parents were pleased with the school’s fine academic reputation, but Marshall was more interested in the location – Music City USA. After graduation, she remained in Nashville, waiting tables by day and singing in bars at night.
After a few years of drifting around (LA, Boston, London, Ketchum [Idaho], Australia, and New Zealand), Marshall returned to Nashville and started writing songs. “The first five got recorded in the order they were written,” she says. “I was encouraged!” Within a year she was signed to Epic (CBS/SONY) Records. Three albums later she was dropped from the label:.
Marshall Chapman was too cool and real for
Nashville in the seventies. Not to mention
too bluesy, too irreverent, too original, too
powerhouse, and too tall for an industry that
expected its ‘girl singers’ to be complacent,
subservient, and, of course, petite (the better
for pushing around).
– Alanna Nash
Stereo Review
Marshall refers to the ’80s as her “missing years.” Regardless, she managed to record Take It on Home (Rounder, 1982); tour with John Prine, Jimmy Buffett, and Lonnie Mack; and start her own label – Tall Girl Records. (Motto: “We’re too tall to sell ourselves short!”) Tall Girl’s first release was Dirty Linen (1987), which garnered great reviews and was picked up by Line Records in Germany for European distribution. All the while, Marshall wrote songs that other artists recorded – artists like Joe Cocker, Dion, Irma Thomas, Emmylou Harris, John Hiatt, Wynonna, Sawyer Brown, Ronnie Milsap, Tanya Tucker, Jimmy Buffett, Conway Twitty, Russ Taff, and Saffire: the Uppity Blues Women.
The ’90s started off with a bang. Marshall put together a new band – The Love Slaves – and recorded Inside Job (Tall Girl). Stereo Review voted it “Best Recording of the Month” (April 1992).
In 1993, Marshall recorded a live concert at the Tennessee State Prison for Women. Old pal Jimmy Buffett heard the tape and signed her to his label. It’s About Time… was the first release on Margaritaville/Island, heralding Buffett’s new partnership with Chris Blackwell. Again, rave reviews from Time, USA Today, Village Voice, The Washington Post, etc.
Marshall and The Love Slaves spent 1995 and part of ’96 touring with Buffett, playing for over a million people. Afterward, they went into the studio with producer Michael Utley and recorded Love Slave. According to Marshall, being a “love slave” is a way of life. “We’re all slaves to something,” she says, “…might as well be love.”
More recently, Marshall has explored new outlets for her creativity. She, songwriter Matraca Berg, and novelists Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle, along with director Paul Ferguson, created the musical Good Ol’ Girls, which toured theaters across the South in the fall of 2003. The New York Times called it a “feminist literary country-music review.”
Marshall’s first book, Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller (St. Martin’s Press), was published in September 2003. The book was a 2004 SEBA Book Award finalist, and one of three finalists for the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. A softcover edition was released in September 2004.
In the past year, Marshall has performed from San Francisco to New York; from Blytheville, Arkansas to Loachapoka, Alabama to the Harold Williams Auditorium at the Getty Museum, developing a one-woman show - "An Evening With Marshall Chapman"
Marshall is currently writing commentaries for The Bob Edwards Show (XM Satellite Radio) and touring in support
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