Michael Chapman

Limited Edition 2CD Set of unreleased recordings. Treehouse 44 release the first known recordings by British folk guitar hero Michael Chapman. Previously unreleased, these are the earliest known recordings of this great British guitar hero, or as Michael Chapman calls it "The album I had no idea I had made!" This follows on the heels of Light in The Attic'c catalogue re-issue programme. TreeHouse44 has worked closely with Michael Chapman, being allowed full access to his private archive, to produce a unique album that captures the earliest stages in the career of this phenomenal artist. The story of how Michael Chapman turned pro as a musician, walking into a Cornish pub and offering to play a gig in return for shelter from the rain outside is both well known and well told.

These two albums are part of a clutch of albums Michael made when he was between record companies and which he recorded for his own production company Rural Retreat Records. Rural Retreat West Virginia, on the old Virgin Creeper Line, was the subject of one of O.Winston Link's famous "train" pics of whom MC is a huge fan. We made the pilgrimage on one of our US road trips hence the name. 2xCD + Booklet in 6 panel Digipack with sleeve notes by Andru Chapman.

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.

Serving as both accomplished career overview and a live-in-the-studio effort that covers two and a half hours and over 40 years of work, Trainsong is a seemingly effortless release, such is the apparent delicacy and grace of Michael Chapman's performing throughout. As Charles Shaar Murray's combatively entertaining liner notes acknowledge, Chapman couldn't play at least one favored piece due to a recent injury. What is on offer, however, is the kind of reflective, elegant playing on both acoustic and electric guitar one would expect from any instrumentalist after decades of experience. From the start, the tender flow of notes on "The Last Polish Breakfast," almost a portrait of sunrise on sparkling water, Chapman seems to be both celebrating his past and claiming a space in the present.

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.

BGO's two-fer reissue of Michael Chapman's most mysterious recording, Window from 1970, and its sequel, Wrecked Again, are two welcome reissues in the British singer/songwriter's CD catalog. Window is the great anomaly in Chapman's erratic, maverick career. The album was due to be recorded as a quick follow-up to the sensation that his debut, Fully Qualified Survivor, created on the British media scene. According to Marc Higgins' fine liner notes to this package, Chapman was supposed to record between touring dates. After a first demo and track session, Chapman went on tour, returning only to find that EMI had rushed 20,000 copies of the demo to print! Chapman himself warned fans off the record, telling them specifically not to buy it, but has performed songs from it in his live show continually for the last 30-plus years. The material is strong, and at this late date, nearly three and half decades after the fact, it sounds fresh. Immediacy, warmth, and the excitement of "first thought, best thought" are all over the set.

After the critical acclaim Michael Chapman received for Rainmaker in 1969, he followed up quickly in early 1970 with Fully Qualified Survivor, a record more adventurous and haunting than its predecessor, with added production flourishes and equally strong songs. Fully Qualified Survivor is the album that established Chapman as a folk troubadour. Leaving the guitar pyrotechnics largely locked in a shed, Chapman concentrated instead on his songwriting skills, and the sacrifice—for this record anyway—paid off. Leaving the lead guitar credits to a fellow Hull-man, Mick Ronson (who got his gig with David Bowie as a result of his playing on this album), with Rick Kemp making a return as bassist and Barry Morgan on drums, Chapman relied on no less than Paul Buckmaster—then beginning to work with Elton John, among others—to employ and arrange a small string section to fill out the songs.

Volume 1, which contains the tracks recorded between 1966 and 1980, was originally released in 2000, and Volume 2, which compiles recordings from 1969 to 1986, came out a year later. CD 1 - 1,2,3,4, Studios, Hull 1966; Tracks 5,6,7 Cellar Folk Club, Southampton 1969; Track 8,9,10,11,12 Southampton University Concert 1971; Tracks 13,14,15,16 Studios, Hull 1980. CD 2 The first four songs are taken from a live show at Southampton Uni Folk Club in 1969. The next 5 are from 1978 and feature Bass Rick Kemp (tracks: 5 to 9) Drums Keef Hartley (tracks: 5 to 9) Guitar Ray Martinez (2) (tracks: 5 to 9) Keyboards Brian Chapman (tracks: 5 to 9) The final track is a half-hour instrumental piece created as backing music for catwalks of Chapman's wife's fashion shows. The CDs come with a poster style booklet comprising sleeve notes and photos.

In the press release that accompanies Michael Chapman's 2017 album 50, the iconic British guitarist refers to it as his "American album." While the material does sound less idiosyncratically British than much of Chapman's body of work, 50 could be more accurately described as his indie rock album. He's best known as a master of the acoustic guitar, but on these sessions, the dominant instrument is the electric guitar of Steve Gunn, who also produced the sessions. Gunn assembled a band of like-minded musicians whose passions encompass indie rock, experimental rock, and the more abstract corner of Americana, and while Chapman's impassioned vocals ride over the top and his acoustic guitar is audible in the mix, the band doesn't bow to Chapman so much as encourage him to keep up with them.

One of the most understated but spectrally beautiful of all Michael Chapman's albums, Window evidences just why producer Gus Dudgeon was in such demand during the early '70s, as he allows the idiosyncratic Chapman to weave each and every one of his musical moods through the sequence, without the record ever appearing to lose its grip. At the time of release, most attention was on the closing craziness of "She Came in Like the '6:15' and Made a Hole in the Wall," as performed (says the sleeve) by the Massed Voices of the Dean Teagarden Singers, featuring the Screaming Skull, the Bombay Banger, and Arthur Dogg. However, there are equal (if less lunatic) joys to be drawn from the reflective "An Old Man Remembers," while the opening "Lady on the Rocks/Song for September" pairing and the disused bookends of "First Lady Song" and "Last Lady Song" all rate among the young Chapman's most engaging works.