Marshall Chapman
Marshall Chapman was the first woman to front a rock and roll band; back when women weren’t yet picking up electric guitars. She rose from her conservative South Carolina background to become a versatile, acclaimed, and playfully irreverent songwriter and pioneer performer. Her songs have been recorded by everyone from Joe Cocker, Emmylou Harris and John Hiatt, to Irma Thomas, Jimmy Buffett and The Uppity Blues Women. Her song, “Betty’s Bein’ Bad,” was a number one country hit for Sawyer Brown. She has recorded ten critically-acclaimed albums, including the 1978 classic Jaded Virgin (voted “Record of the Year” by Stereo Review), It’s About Time… (recorded live at the Tennessee State Prison for Women), and her most-recent, Mellowicious! (which contains the cult classic “Call the Lamas!”). She has toured extensively, both in the U.S. and abroad, and has shared the stage with everybody from John Prine and Jerry Lee Lewis to the Ramones. She and fellow Nashville songwriter Matraca Berg provided the songs for the 1998 theatrical production Good Ol’ Girls, which continues to be staged by regional repertory companies.
More recently, Chapman added “successful author” to her list of accomplishments. Her first book, Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller (St. Martin’s Press) was a 2004 SEBA bestseller, a 2004 SEBA Book Award finalist and one of three finalists for the 2004 Southern Book Critics Circle Award. Look for her second book, They Came to Nashville to be released within the year. “It’s sort of like my first one,” Chapman says. “Lot’s of mischief and mayhem. Fifteen chapters. Fifteen songwriters. I interviewed everybody from Willie Nelson, who I’ve known forever, to Miranda Lambert, who I met when I interviewed her for Garden & Gun," (where Chapman is currently a contributing editor).
