Concert Preview

Tom Chapin: The Man Behind The Music

By Janis Gibson

Singer, songwriter and storyteller Tom Chapin will be the guest artist for the November 6 edition of The Flagpole Radio Café at Edmond Town Hall theater on Main Street. Tom’s contemporary folk-style music and sense of humor that often pokes fun at social, scientific and political trends in the news should blend in well with the engaging variety show created by Jim Allyn, Martin Blanco, and Barbara Gaines in conjunction with Newtown Cultural Arts Commission. 

The Flagpole Radio Café is hosted by musician and radio personality Chris Teskey, who also broadcasts the show on his WPKN radio program.  The show begins at 7 pm. Ticket prices are $18 for adults, $15 for students and senior citizens. If further information is needed, send an e-mail off to info@FlagpoleProductions.org.

Tall, easygoing and with a warm manner and smile, the 65-year-old father and grandfather has been crisscrossing the nation with his songs, stories, and optimistic spirit for more than 40 years — and I have been attending his concerts in venues large and small since 1981. Like his other fans, I am drawn by his musicianship — he plays six- and 12-string guitars, as well as the banjo, mandolin and autoharp — the songs both touching and humorous, and the opportunity to learn the stories behind them, and, well, the fun I have attending his performances, which always include some sing-alongs.

Although I have often briefly chatted with Tom after shows — he is one of those musicians who regularly comes out to mingle with his audience members after a show is over — it was with a combination of excitement and nervousness that I spoke with him by phone last weekend as he visited with family in California, who were gathered to celebrate the first birthday of his granddaughter, Myra Jean

Asked how being a grandfather may have influenced his life and music, Tom replied, “One of the most interesting things about having grandchildren is the realization that your kids are adults. Being a parent and grandparent takes you out of yourself, makes you more aware of the world around you, causes you to become more engaged.”

Tom had, in fact, spent part Saturday morning helping to create a garden at the nursery school his grandson Miles attends.

“Miles is almost 5 now and has started to get into my children’s songs, which is interesting,” he said.

When Tom’s younger daughters Abigail and Lily, now 29 and 30 and touring themselves as The Chapin Sisters, were about 7 and 8, Tom realized that most children’s songs were obnoxious to adults, so he set out writing his own, ones he thought adults would enjoy as well, which brought him to a whole new  audience.

He believes teaching through storytelling is a great way to connect with kids and while many of his songs are quite silly, which is why kids love them, a number have good manners or environmental overtones. He is active in environmental causes, as well as in working to get music and the arts back in schools

About half of his 21 albums are child oriented, and he continues to perform both family and adult concerts. 

Although Tom has written a song celebrating the birth of each of his three grandchildren (Miles  has a younger brother, Max), he noted that his children’s songs “were never about some cute little things Abigail or Lily did today,” but rather “grown men playing, following our own delight.” Some songs fall into the “kidult” category — children’s themes from an adult perspective — my personal favorite being “The Battle Beast and Barbie,” which was written as a release after composing a number of songs for Parker Bros for the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls that were so popular in the 1980s.

“We’ve had a wonderful run with the kids songs and are currently working on a new record around food themes,” he noted. “Locally Grown,” which debuted on National Public Radio early this year, is one such song.

Tom does not have a particular philosophy when it comes to writing songs, other than “writing takes the form of what moves you, what has resonance.” Admitting with a laugh that he is a long way from  “writing about the relationship of the week” or “hoping for a hit” of his early years, he now focuses on “what moves me, what is important to me, and the craft of writing.”

He has fun with relationship songs, such as “Upstate New York Waltz,” which humorously follows a couple’s relationship through a series of cities and towns, but some of his love songs now reflect a mature and enduring love — for his wife Bonnie, his children, immediate and extended family, and humanity.

Probably his most personal reflections can be found in his 2006 recording, Turning of The Tide, which includes “Hearts On The Road,” “My Mother’s Quiet Eyes,” “Distant Drummer” (about his late father, the jazz drummer Jim Chapin), and “Lamentation,” about the passing of two of his brothers, Harry and James. The reflective “At The End Of The Day” could become a song to be sung on New Year’s Eve.

Anything can inspire a song, he notes.

“I’ll get an idea, follow it, if I like it and it resonates, I’ll follow it to the end,” he said. “If it works, I’ll start using it in shows. Only the audience will tell you if it will last, and how you feel singing it. Sometimes a song will get old for you, so you put it away and pull it out later and go, ‘Oh.’ You see it in a different way.

“One such song,” he continued, “is ‘Our Mothers Built the City’ [written with Si Kahn in 1995]. The lyrics are very prescient to our world today — ‘Every time I read the paper, everywhere I look today, every time I check the TV I hear no chance, no hope, no way.’”

The song was inspired by comment his oldest brother, James, who was a history professor, made in a conversation about New York City when it was going through one of its difficult periods: “This incredible city was built by our grandparents and great-grandparents; people who were significantly worse off than we are today. And now we can barely maintain it.”

Another educator whose comments resulted in song is the renowned geochemist Wallace Broecker, Newberry Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and a scientist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, who is one of Bonnie’s brothers. He developed and popularized the idea of a global conveyor belt of currents in the world’s oceans, which Tom translated into “Uncle Wally’s Tale” in 2000.

Tom said he was “surprised at how the songs fit together in Let The Bad Times Roll,” released last year. “Suddenly I had 15 songs that reflected what’s happened over the last three or four years,” he said. “The world looks quite different, attitudes have changed, which was reflected in ‘We Will Adjust’  [Got a digital camera, got a new cell phone / Though I can’t figure out how to download a ring tone/ I call and leave a message / My kids send back a text…] and ‘This Too Shall Pass.’”

“Love Lasts Long” is a reminder of what is important, and the first time I heard “Hunter” it took my breath away. As a parent whose daughter left for college last fall, the words of wisdom in “Father, Daughter, Mother, Son” particularly resonated and I copied the lyrics and shared them with my daughter. My favorite verse?

“Tie yourself to someone / Who will help you sing your song; / Someone you can laugh with, / Who’ll talk when things go wrong. / How to keep your door wide open / To great love and great pain, / How to pick yourself up when you fall / And go dancing in the rain.”

Collaboration, in song writing and on stage, is important to Tom. As he explained it, “Collaborating enlarges my talent, opens up the palette, but performing solo is also very powerful.” 

His primary onstage collaborators for more than 20 years have been Michael Mark and Jon Colbert, who will not be part of the Flagpole Radio Café show. While composing with many, including Michael and Jon, his primary musical collaborators have been Si Kahn and John Forster. And Tom’s newest CD, called Broadsides: A Miscellany of Musical Opinion, set to be released November 2 (mp3 downloads are already available), is a joint venture of  Tom and John Forster. Among the songs on the CD are “The Chief Executive Chain Gang,” “Digital Delinquents” and “Econo-Me-Oh-My.”

It also includes one of Tom’s most popular recent songs, “Not On The Test,” a swipe at today’s emphasis on test scores, which he and John wrote and was debuted on National Public Radio’s Morning Show on January 1, 2007.

“We really didn’t expect too many people to hear it at that hour, but the response then and since has been amazing, especially with teachers,” he said. The YouTube version has had more than 130,000 hits.

No Tom Chapin concert would be complete without at least one of Harry’s songs, often “Cats in the Cradle,” “Taxi,” “Mr Tanner” or “Circle,” which Harry wrote for Tom’s 1970s TV show, Make A Wish, and which has become “the Chapin Family anthem.” He sometimes plays one of Harry’s lesser known but touching songs, including his “education rant,” “Flowers Are Red” or “Mail Order Annie.”

“I really love what I do,” Tom concluded. “It is a fulfilling  and interesting way of making a living.”

Tom serves on the board of World Hunger Year, the charity Harry founded 35 years ago, which this year changed its name to WhyHunger. The organization’s annual Hungerthon, an auction of many music and sports-related as well as other items, will be conducted over several radio stations November 20 and 23 (see www.WhyHunger.org for details).

In addition to information on concert schedule and recordings, Tom’s website (www.TomChapin.com) provides links to video clips and, under “Do Something!,” other websites where you can support a cause simply by clicking on the site.