Chapman Love

In 1969 British singer/songwriter Michael Chapman took the U.K.'s folk-rock world by surprise with his debut album, Rainmaker, on the Harvest label. In an era when each week garnered a new surprise in the music world, gathering serious and widespread critical acclaim wasn't easy, and finding a buying public near impossible. Rainmaker showcases a new talent who holds nothing back for himself. Every songwriting principle and trick, killer guitar riff, and songwriting hook in his bag makes an appearance here (something he would never do again). As a result, there are several truly striking things about the album that makes it stand out from the rest of the Brit folk-rock slog from the late '60s. One of them is Chapman's guitar playing.

This music, the album EB=MC2 and Chapman and Banai’s concerts together before that can ultimately be traced back to two valleys. One near Hawnby, North Yorkshire, lush green and full of trees, the other, more austere, in northern Galilee. Michael Chapman, paying his way through Art College in the early ’60s worked as a woodsman on the North Yorkshire Mexborough estate in the summer breaks and found inspiration for classics like “In the Valley” and “Among the Trees,” leaning against the trees with his guitar. Slightly later, Ehud Banai spent an extended reflective period in the ’70s, alone near Rosh Pina in Galilee, with his guitar, a ghetto blaster and one cassette. On that inspirational cassette was Michel Chapman’s 1969 Fully Qualified Survivor album. Travel forward over 30 years to 2012, and Ehud, now a successful musician with a string of his own albums, is playing The 12 Bar Club on Denmark Street in London.

With a delivery that makes John Martyn sound like a Shakespearian voice coach, the one-time hero of the early Harvest days returns with a small band (Steeleye Span's Rick Kemp and Lindisfarne's Ray Laidlaw) and his best album in years. Indeed, the old obsessions (loneliness, love, drinking, injustice) have not been explored this convincingly since 1970's Fully Qualified Survivor. It Ain't So is an understated grumble of a song, feeding off an insistent minor riff; The North Will Rise unexpectedly introduces northern dissaffection to a reggae beat; while Hard Times has a riff and solo that recall Chapman's ex-guitarist, Mick Ronson. If anything, the ballads hit even harder, particularly Drinking Alone and the title track, where humanity and old-fashioned canniness produce a song to break hearts old and young.

Hopefully this reissue of Chapman's 1993 disc will find a wider audience than it managed the first time around. For those who love his late-'60s work, there's a real harking back to the classic Rainmaker in the title, and even a new version of one of his best-known songs, "Postcards of Scarborough." Doing everything himself, Chapman melds his gritty voice with thoughtful lyrics and rippling guitar work, although he does cut loose on a couple of occasions, on the instrumentals "Akublu" and "Elinkine," while his non-vocal take on "She Moves Through the Fair" glides with an almost ethereal grace. He can still write some stunning, insightful songs, like "Fool in the Night," with its remorse, or the wistful "Falling from Grace."

With a delivery that makes John Martyn sound like a Shakespearian voice coach, the one-time hero of the early Harvest days returns with a small band (Steeleye Span's Rick Kemp and Lindisfarne's Ray Laidlaw) and his best album in years. Indeed, the old obsessions (loneliness, love, drinking, injustice) have not been explored this convincingly since 1970's Fully Qualified Survivor. It Ain't So is an understated grumble of a song, feeding off an insistent minor riff; The North Will Rise unexpectedly introduces northern dissaffection to a reggae beat; while Hard Times has a riff and solo that recall Chapman's ex-guitarist, Mick Ronson. If anything, the ballads hit even harder, particularly Drinking Alone and the title track, where humanity and old-fashioned canniness produce a song to break hearts old and young.