Marshall Chapman's newsletter is called "The Tall Girl Skinny." She wears pearls, and her drawl recalls a more elegant era, but she was a groundbreaking female in the macho world of making music in the 70's. She is a singer songwriter, and a writer, too, having just put out her second book, They Came To Nashville. You can read a preview passage here, that talks about much of her time with Emmylou Harris. It is the follow up book to her memoir Good Bye Little Rock and Roller which references that her life is "the triumph of rock and roll over good breeding." Marshall was a debutante in Spartanburg, SC, thus the pearls. And she picked up an electric guitar back when the landscape was populated by mostly folkie females with angst. She was a revelation, a balls to the wall tour de force. To wit, check out "Rode Hard and Put Up Wet," which was the song that introduced me to Marshall, on her album Me, I'm Feeling Free in 1977.

Since there is a grand scope to the work of Marshall Chapman, it shouldn't surprise you that there is a new CD out, her twelfth, called Big Lonesome. Marshall comments:

"I recorded this album after my best friend in music, Tim Krekel, died in June 2009. He was 58. We were planning to record a duet album called Sweet Talkin’ and had booked gigs throughout the summer, including a couple in San Miguel, Mexico. I wanted to end the album with a live recording (like Waylon did on Dreaming My Dreams). So we decided on 'I Love Everybody' from the 2003 Belgium Rhythm & Blues Festival. Tim plays lead guitar and harmonica and sings on this track, so it seemed right and good. The only problem was we didn’t have a multi-track. (Our performance had been directly mixed in Belgium Radio 1’s mobile recording unit.) Regardless, the track sounded pretty damn good, so we decided to go with it."

And we think this solo performance from the Music Fog sessions in Nashville, during Americana Fest, sounded damn fine too! Tim, we are missing you.

- Jessie Scott