Nightlife / Music

Chapin looks to the past for inspiration

By David Burke | Wednesday, April 02, 2008 | () comments

(Contributed photo) Jen Chapin will play with with Andrew Landers on Friday at Redstone Room in Davenport.

For once, Jen Chapin says, she’s letting other people’s music speak the words she wants to say.

She’s releasing the album “Light of Mine” on her own, and it includes an array of cover songs originally done by David Bowie (“Starman”), Radiohead (“Mattress”), Bruce Springsteen (“Born in the U.S.A. and “American Skin”), John Lennon (“Nobody Told Me”), Van Morrison (“Into the Mystic”), Stevie Wonder (“You Ain’t Done Nothin’ ”), Joni Mitchell and others.

There also are two songs of her own, but a lot of the album is from the 1970s, “where my heart resides,” the 36-year-old singer said.

Picking the songs came organically, she said in a telephone interview.

“As we went through building the repertoire, looking around at things going on in the world, it just developed,” she said. “It reflected in the title, which is turning away from a culture of fear and callowness and resignation into something that has shaped our political culture to a sense of recognizing our own individual power and responsibility to ourselves and each other.”

She was backed on the album by the Rosetta Trio — her husband, bass player Stephan Crump, and guitarist Jamie Fox, as well as another guitarist who will not be with them for the concert Friday night in the River Music Experience’s Redstone Room.

“It’s a real intimate little tight unit, as far as being able to anticipate and react to each other,” she said. “The groove is so strong you don’t need drums.”

One artist she’s not covering on the album is her father, the late Harry Chapin of “Taxi” and “Cat’s in the Cradle” fame. Although she did record the latter for a compilation album of second-generation artists that was done especially for Target stores last year, she said that was a one-time occurrence.

“I’m looking to affirm my own story here,” she added.

Although she’s not following her father musically, she is following his footsteps in terms of her humanitarian efforts. She is the past chairman and currently the secretary of World Hunger Year, or WHY, which her father founded. Three dollars from each ticket to the Friday night concert will go to WHY.

“Now that’s a big part of my life,” she said. “We’re engaged in current issues of security and nutrition and the political dialogue we’re having.

“It’s been part of my entire life, so there’s just a natural connection.”

Chapin was interviewed by telephone this week from Bryn Mawr, Pa., where she was signing up voters on behalf of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the U.S. senator from Chicago.

She supports Obama for “the idea that we can be better, that our intellect and our heart and our optimism can be appealed to,” Chapin explained.

And, like Obama, Chapin said she is a “policy geek.”

Chapin and Crump travel on the road with their son, Maceo, and have Fox as part of an extended family. Maceo turned 2 in September and loves life on the road, his mother said.

“It’s a strangely great way to raise a kid,” she said. “We spend all day together, find a pretty young girl to play with him for two hours during the show, and the rest of the time we pick out the playgrounds and the museums. He packs up the guitar chords after the show.”

David Burke can be contacted at (563) 383-2400 or dburke@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.

ifyougo

Who: Jen Chapin, with opening act Andrew Landers

When: 8 p.m. Friday, March 28

Where: Redstone Room, inside the River Music Experience, 129 Main St., Davenport

How much: $15, with $3 from each ticket going to World Hunger Year

Information: (563) 326-1333 or RedstoneRoom.com on the Web

Also on the Web: JenChapin.com