Gary James' Interview With
Jen Chapin



She's performed onstage with Bruce Springsteen, on bills with Aimee Mann, Bruce Hornsby and The Neville Brothers. She's appeared on Late Night With Conan O'Brien, NPR's Mountain Stage, Wood Songs Old-Time Radio Hour, WFUF's Sunday Breakfast with John Platt, Mary Sue Twohy's Folk Village and The Bob Edwards Show on Sirius Satellite. Her release, "Reckoning" was named among the Best American Albums. We are talking about Jen Chapin. If the last name sounds familiar, it's because her father was Harry Chapin.

Q - Jen, you were or are a high school global history teacher in Brooklyn. Is that before you decided to pursue a career in music?

A - No. It's actually overlapping. When I first came to the city I had a job teaching music at a high school. Then I had some tours that were in Europe and so it made it hard to do both. So I started doing music full-time around 1996. My husband is also a musician, a Jazz bassist and composer, and it kind of got to the point where the kids are kind of independent. Basically I went back into teaching and teaching History around 2016. So, I did music full-time for twenty-something years.

Q - Was it an easy transition for you then to go from music back into the classroom?

A - It's never easy. Teaching is like a huge challenge and you really have to do it to be able to do it. So, I went back to school first in 2014 and got my certification and Masters in Adolescent Education in Social Studies. When I taught music it was at a private school, small classes. It was kind of a cushy environment. But teaching in a regular school was like twenty to thirty kids and all different mandates and obligations. I would say it took me a few years before I had my sea legs. I would do concerts and when people would hear I was also teaching they would say, "I would love to be in your class. You must be an amazing teacher." I would always say, "Not yet." (laughs) That's what it really comes down to. You just have to do it and do it. I'm now at the place where I'm really enjoying it. It's super hard work, but it's meaningful work. I'm at the point where I feel a lot more confident that I'm serving the student. It's very stimulating.

Q - Did any of your students comment on you last name and say, "By chance, are you related to..."

A - Yes, but they are of a generation that are less likely to know. I can think of one student last year who went to a Bruce Springsteen concert with her Dad and the next day she was like, "Oh, Bruce Springsteen started talking about your Dad from the stage and trying to make a difference about the fight against hunger." It was sort of like she had a generational connection. I would say there's like two or three students every year who were like, "Oh, my Mom knows about your Dad's music," or something like that. What happens more often is you introduce yourself in the beginning of the year, like what every teacher says, and I'll just right away say, "I'm a musician." Kids will come across my website or they'll look on YouTube. They'll be like, "Ms. Chapin, you're famous!" So, it more happens that they recognize I have a career that has been documented more than connecting to my Dad.

Q - You mentioned Bruce Springsteen. Does that mean you at one point opened for Springsteen or did you appear along side him onstage?

A - (laughs) There's been a few events where we've been on the stage for like an event where my husband, who I mentioned before, is a musician. We've performed many times before as a duo of just acoustic bass and voice and we were invited to perform at a Springsteen tribute in 2006 at The Winter Garden in downtown Manhattan. It was a tribute specifically to Springsteen's album "Nebraska". We kind of ended up doing an unreleased track, which is an early version of "Born In The U.S.A.". Later we recorded it. It's pretty cool. It kind of goes against the grain of the whole anthem, which kind of gets misinterpreted as being junk patriotism whereas Springsteen had in mind much more as a social commentary about Vietnam and so on. So, our version is kind of a radical interpretation. When we came offstage he actually wasn't officially going to be at the event. But it turns out he showed up and it was a little nerve wracking because I'm still trying to get my act together, make sure I have the lyrics, and he is on the side of the stage, watching us. When we came off he was like, "Nice job." At the end of the night there was a planned encore, which the organizer, David Spellman asked my husband and I to try and orchestrate and get that started. When Springsteen came out, to the great surprise of the audience, although you never know when he's going to show up, so we were kind of sharing the mic. We were singing a Woody Guthrie song. I think if the organizer had chose to do a Bruce Springsteen song for the encore, that he (Bruce) might have said no, but it was a Woody Guthrie song and I think he just couldn't resist one of his idols. It actually showed up in Rolling Stone. There was a picture that showed us with Springsteen. It was funny because my son, who is 18 now, was an infant at the time. We had brought him to the concert and he was kind of getting passed around to different performers. We were only there to sing one song, but the when it came time for the encore everybody was onstage. So, there was nobody left to hold on to him. We took him up onstage. He was wearing ear protection. That looked kind of striking. So, there's a picture of mr holding a baby next to Bruce Springsteen getting on the mic for a Woody Guthrie vocal.

Q - Does having the name Chapin help you get attention from the public and the industry people?

A - Definitely, to a small extent. The fact that I make my main living as a history teacher speaks to the lack of leverage it has in the industry. (laughs) I've had a ton of great press. Lots of nice reviews. Some like nibbles here and there and I had a record deal with an indie label some years ago. A two album deal. I think it was sort of a little side note. Oh, okay, that's something we can mention in the press at least. My Dad's career was so much more about fan devotion. He kind of represented the old industry. He had a ten or eleven album deal. It's the kind of thing they just don't do anymore. He had some success with his final album. He doesn't represent the model, especially in the streaming era which I've kind of straddled, part of why I'm teaching history. When I started, people had to pay for music. That's no longer the case.

Q - I don't know how old you are.

A - I'm not sensitive about it. I'm 53. Just by virtue of the fact that you know who my Dad is. He died in 1981. You can sort of do the math. But I can only be so young.

Q - How much do you remember about your father? Would he sing around the house for example?

A - Oh, yeah. He'd work on songs. He'd be trying stuff out. His last album in particular. I think my little brother and I got a chance to feel connected to him because he was working it out. But it's more about him being a dad. When he was home he wasn't typically working on music. He was trying to maximize his time with us and be really present. Going to the bowling ally. Going to the movies. Going to dinner. Going on trips. He was often like on the go, so I guess he would come home and want to hang out with us, but it wasn't like we were watching TV together. He had a sort of manic energy. It was like, "Okay. Let's go out and do this. Let's go out and do that."

Q - Where is the marketplace for your music?

A - Well, I can't say I've really found any sweet spot. There's always been sort of a critical mass of largely middle aged men who remember my Dad who have a curiosity about my music. But I'm in a nice place for me, for my own satisfaction of like where I'm still making the music, but I'm not trying tp hustle a living. So often you're spending all your time booking gigs, writing press releases, updating your website. Unless you really have a great staff, or even if you do not have a great staff, they're signing you up to do promotion. So, I'm in this nice place where I have my regular salary and I'm not really worried about selling anymore. When I make music, it's for me.

Q - Your father was very passionate about ending hunger in America and the world. I've been hearing about hunger my whole life. But when you get right down to it, why is there hunger in such a rich country like the U.S.?

A - Well, you're speaking his language because the organization he co-founded in 1975, World Hunger Year was the acronym WHY, saying we have to say "Why?" As a society and even more now have come to see this as part of the human condition instead of what he called it, which is an obscenity. It's an insult. It's an affront to human rights and it's simply preventable. We now go by the name "Why Hunger?". I have served on the Board of that organization. I was Chair of the Board. I was secretary. I've been on the Strategic Planning Committee. I've been involved in a million different functions. I'm very connected to the mission and the work. As a history teacher you really get into those questions. In my class we talk about Imperialism and the phenomenon of rich countries dominating smaller, less technologically advanced countries and distorting their food systems so that you have a country like say Ghana, where you would have traditionally people feeding themselves. People farming. People creating all kinds of integrated, diverse economics and they're imperialized by Great Britain and their function becomes about serving the colonial master, in which case family farms get turned into cocoa farms or cotton farms or some kind of producer of raw material that is more about profit than people's sustenance. So, that's part of the historical factor, but it aligns with our economy where you see food as a commodity. It's a product. It's developed. We have a food system that is about convenience. It's about government subsidies making the cheapest calories, the least nutritious foods that are obtainable and actual nutritious food is more elusive. In America it's wages. We have, as everybody knows, basically from my entire lifetime, people have been getting ever more productive and have their work devalued. And we've allowed that to happen.

Official Website: www.JenChapin.com

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