reviews |
![]() Marshall Chapman (from the album Songs I Can’t Live Without available on Tallgirl Records) Marshall Chapman sidles over a on gurgling beat, stepping up the microphone, checking the volume with a count of two, and offering a spoken/sung reading of Leonard Cohen’s treatise on the music business, “Tower of Song”. The track is album opener for Songs I Can’t Live Without from Marshall Chapman. The tunes are a collection, cuts that healed and sheltered the singer, Marshall Chapman returning the favor by wringing emotion from the characters walking the halls of the stories. The strength of an oak, the tenderness of a lover, the advice of a cherished teacher, the promise of a safe haven, the voice of Marshall Chapman is a musical chameleon, a seductive pied piper. Following a five-year period when she left the music business for good, Marshall Chapman returns with Songs I Can’t Live Without. A chance meeting with Neilson Hubbard in 2015, and a desire from both to record together, led to the recording of Songs I Can’t Live Without. For the tracks on the album Marshall Chapman choose to bring a batch of tunes from other songwriters in for the record, feeling that ‘the songs I write have always been so personal. I needed a break. I was getting tired of living myself into a corner, just so I could write myself out’. Songs I Can’t Live Without transforms its singer, Marshall Chapman the hardworn roaddog in Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page”, the finger-snapping lonely lover for Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Be Cruel”, the empty heart bleeding out in Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone”, and the good times beckoning into after dark promises with “After Midnight”. A gospel march takes Songs I Can’t Live Without towards an exit, Marshall Chapman taking the pulpit singing salvation with “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands as she preaches her truth in a sermon of hope. Ragged strums, Marshall Chapman reaches into your soul hoping to find a flicker of commitment in “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”, her admissions falling like rain down a window as guitar chords shrug a rhythm in “I Fall in Love Too Fast” while Songs I Can’t Live Without wistfully sings dreams of home for “Tennessee Blues”. Listen and buy the music of Marshall Chapman from AMAZON For more information, please visit the Marshall Chapman website
1 Comment
Rico Thomas
5/9/2020 01:18:09 pm
I have always admired and enjoyed your music. Thanks for the miles.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
May 2022
|