A Conversation with Marshall Chapman – HuffPost 6.3.13
Mike Ragogna: Marshall, how are you doing lately beyond the new album?
Marshall Chapman: Life is good. It’s hard to talk about anything BUT the new album right now, but my husband and I take every moment we can to eat really well. He’s a wonderful cook. We take walks around da hood, and so on. Sunday before Memorial Day, I drove the Natchez Trace alone to Mississippi to clear my head and listen to music. My only days off and I drive nearly 700 miles. Coming back, I drove over two long snakes within a hundred yards of each other. I’m taking that as a good omen.
MR: Your new album Blaze of Glory is like the second part of your last project, Big Lonesome, and you basically have the same crew with you. What were your creative intentions as you got into this project?
MC: Intentions? Hmmm … that sounds like I had a plan. (laughs) Seriously, I have never felt as focused as I did going into this project. Oftentimes, whenever you go in the studio, you’re hoping to find something. With this one, I knew I had it going in. It was just a matter of the guys stepping up, and, believe me, they did … and then some. Everybody just brought it.
MR: Why the title Blaze of Glory?
MC: For a while in the beginning, the working title was Sexagenarian. I mean, I’m 64, so that’s what I am. (laughs) I had just learned that word, and the fact that it had the word “sex” in it cracked me up. I’m thinking, How appropriate! At my age, sex feels like “last call” at a bar. Anyway, the first songs you hear on the album are kind of romantic and sexy; then the later ones deepen into the whole mortality thing. “Blaze of Glory” was the last song I wrote for this project, and the minute I finished it, I knew it would be the last song on the album and the title track.
MR: Do you have a Blaze of Glory studio story you can share?
MC: Being in the studio is so intense, so there’s a lot of goofiness involved, just to stay loose. Let’s see… I remember, at one point, Mike Utley and I making up this little dance while listening to a playback. It was something between a rhumba and The Dirty Dog. Then another time, I overhear someone say, “Making records is like making sausage. You don’t want to know what’s in there, you just want to like it in the end.” Serious conversations about spaceship insurance. You know…the usual.
MR: Let’s get into the songs. Can you take us on a tour?
MC: Well, the songs you hear on this album are presented in the order they were written. And they were recorded that way too, so there was no sequencing. I’ve been making records for nearly four decades, and that’s the first time that’s ever happened.
MR: What was it like hanging with Todd Snider, Mike Utley and the gang again. Is it like summer camp?
MC: Those guys are like family. Brothers really. Mike especially. For a while, Mike & Fran lived around the corner from Chris and me, then they moved to Venice, California. So I was really happy Mike was able to fly in for these sessions. And I’ve grown close to Will Kimbrough since the recording of Big Lonesome, which is when I really first met him. Jim Mayer, I don’t see as much, but we had some great moments sitting on the sofa in the control room while listening to playbacks. I would snuggle up to him…there’s a photo of me doing that while we were listening to the first playback of “Blaze of Glory.” That baión bass lick … Jim came up with that and it made the track. Baión is that latin rhythm Tom Dowd and those guys used on a lot of Drifters records. You can hear it in “Under the Boardwalk.” Anyway, in the photo, we look like we’re on ecstasy.
MR: What other guests appear on this album?
MC: The only guests outside the core band – Mike, Will, Jim and Casey Wood – was Todd Snider, who sang with me on the first track. And then Ashley Cleveland sang harmony on the chorus of “Waiting for the Music.”
MR: Mexico played a huge role in influencing your life lately and the last two albums. Can you go into that and maybe reveal a couple of your adventures?
MC: For a while, I’d convinced myself I could only write in Mexico. But it was more than that, of course. I’d met a man down there and sort of flipped out. I couldn’t believe something like that could happen at my age. I finally came to my senses. Well, not really. It was more God doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself. But a group of us traveled all over these remote, exquisitely beautiful parts of Mexico that few ever get to see. I wrote “Beyond Words” sitting in the hallway outside my hotel room in Taninul. I mean, we were in the middle of nowhere! Like that hotel in The Shining, only in a tropical setting.
MR: Who were some of your influences?
MC: Besides Elvis … oh, all the black girl groups like The Shirelles, The Marvelettes and The Angels. Just off the top of my head, bearing in mind some of these influenced me as a songwriter, while others as an artist, Jackie Wilson, Hank Williams, James Brown, Kris Kristofferson, Cindy Walker, Lou Reed, Johnny Cash, The Rolling Stones, Bob Seger, Willie, Waylon, John Stewart, Big Joe Turner, Billy Joe Shaver, Millie Jackson, Doc Pomus, Maurice Williams, The Drifters, Bobby Bare, Wanda Jackson…
MR: Awesome roll call. Got any personal, historical anecdotes like an Elvis story?
MC: It’s hard to beat the one about my hearing him that first time as a seven year old, sitting in the colored balcony at the Carolina Theater. This was in my hometown of Spartanburg, South Carolina. My parents were out of town and I’d gone to a matinee performance with Cora Jeter, who cooked and baby sat for my family. This was 1956, back when segregation was in full swing. I just remember when Elvis walked out on stage, it was like lightning had struck the building. The place went berserk.
MR: Other artists have had hits with some of your original songs. That doesn’t seem very fair, not one bit.
MC: I’m always grateful when someone else records a song of mine. It’s what’s paid my bills up to this point, so I got no complaints.
MR: Peter Guralnick referred to you as a “force of nature.” You really are, aren’t you. And what does your husband have to say about all this love from relative strangers?
MC: My husband says we’re in the love business…so bring it on! As for being a force of nature, I try to pick my spots. The rest of the time, I’m pretty pitiful. Just ask my sisters. (laughs)
MR: Did that mill town south of Macon ever really have a hold on you? By the way, yourMe I’m Feeling Free album is one of my favorite Amerciana albums ever.
MC: I wrote “Somewhere South of Macon” with a songwriter from Lubbock named Jim Rushing. We were basically trying to write something for someone in country music to hopefully record. “…Macon” was basically a coming of age song about a young girl leaving home. I grew up in a cotton mill town in South Carolina. For years, I felt like a stranger in a strange land here in Nashville, Tennessee. But now, I wouldn’t live anywhere else. Nashville has become my home.
MR: I think you were the first to record “Ready For The Time To Get Better,” the eventual Crystal Gayle hit.
MC: I believe that’s true. Allen Reynolds wrote that song. We were friends at the time I recorded it. And we’re still friends. I always heard “Ready For The Times…” as sort of a blues lament.
But great songs are like that. They lend themselves to different interpretations.
MR: You have a musical, Good Ol’ Girls, based on works by Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle. How did that come together?
MC: It all started with Matraca Berg. Matraca called me out of the blue. Said she wanted to do a musical called Good Ol’ Girls and she wanted to do it with me and she wanted to do it with Lee Smith. She didn’t know Lee, but I did, so I called Lee the minute we hung up. Lee didn’t seem that excited. I imagine whe was in the midst of writing a novel. But she knew Matraca’s music and was crazy about her. Anyway, three days later, I get a call from Lee saying (1) we had a director–Paul Ferguson–and (2) she was bringing in Jill McCorkle. None of us knew each other that well, but now we are all the best of friends. The show has toured the southeast and had a few runs. On Valentines Day night in 2011, it opened off-Broadway. Paul Ferguson adapted the whole thing from Lee and Jill’s books. Matraca and I contributed fourteen songs. Some were ones we already had. Others we wrote for the musical. Matraca and I ended up writing one called “Your Husband’s Cheating On Us” which is the title of one of Jill’s short stories. So of course, Matraca and I cut her in. Now Jill McCorkle is a BMI songwriter!
MR: You’ve also worn a couple of hats other than being a musician, like you were an actor in Country Strong.
MC: I played the Gwyneth Paltrow character’s road manager. I’ve known quite a few road managers in my day, so I didn’t have far to go. Basically I played myself. It was a great experience. My first time in a movie. It was like being at that summer camp you mentioned earlier. A summer camp for lovable eccentrics.
MR: You also penned They Came To Nashville.
MC: Actually, I’ve written two books, both non-fiction. I may write a novel one day. Who knows. An old boyfrind of mine – the art critic iconoclast, Dave Hickey – I once heard him say, “Save the truth for fiction.”
MR: My traditional question, what advice do you have for new artists?
MC: I often get asked that. And the truth is, I really don’t know what to say, other than … Keep breathing. Don’t sweat things you can’t control. Roll with it. Things like that.
MR: Marshall, just how tall are you really. Reports vary between 6 and 7 feet.
MC: (laughs) I tell everyone I’m six feet. I’m probably just under, but nobody ever argues with me when I say I’m six feet, so I’ll stick with that.
MR: What’s your tour going to be like?
MC: We’re playing dates, but I’m not as concerned with touring as I was with Big Lonesome. We did over a hundred shows that year. My goals are different with this one. With …Lonesome, I just wanted to break even. With Blaze…, it’s more about the work. This may sound dorky, but I just want Blaze of Glory to get the recognition it deserves. And if taking an “invisibility” pill and changing my name to “Infinity” would help achieve that, I’d do it in a heartbeat! It really is about the work.
MR: Can you be any cooler, is that even possible?
MC: Sure…if I were dead! Then I couldn’t worry about anything. Holds some appeal, doesn’t it?
MR: (laughs) No, and we want you around for at least another five decades, oh by the way. Marshall, all the best, I think you’re awesome.
MC: Thank you, Michael. It’s been a pleasure.
Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne