Michael Chapman  
 

albums like Fully Qualified Survivor and Rainmaker were a welcome breath of realism in an often comatose acoustic scene. Chapman shared with JJ Cale a penchant for understatement, smoky vocals and beautifully tasteful guitar, and if some found his gloomy songs unsettling, to his devotees like the late John Peel they've never been anything short of an inspired commentary on the human condition .

More than three decades leter. Michael Chapman is still out there. He's as uncompromising as ever-his sole concession to stage craft is to exchange one crumpled T-Shirt for another-and when he leaves his lair in the badlands of North Cumbria and rides into town toting his Larrivee, Jackson Browne this ain't. The reality is that Michael Chapman has never quite fitted in, and despite his early years playing his dues in folk clubs, promoters now view him with about as mush enthusiasm as a vampire has for garlic tablets.

'It's funny but folk music has never really been my thing.' He laughs and launches into the story of a recent Yorkshire gig. 'I'd had it in my diary for weeks. I turned up on a Tuesday night at seven o'clock, set my PA up and did a quick soundcheck. I came back around quarter to eight and there's hell on. This guy says to me "Who the hell are you?" I said "I'm Michael Chapman, and i'm playing here tonight. He said "No you're not , we're having a singers night. I never booked you." I said "Well it's been on my date sheet for months, it's done now; you charge £3 on the door andI'll take whatever you get. He agreed, but when I came back there was still hell on. "Look," he said, "all those people in the front four rows-we don't know who they are, and those are our seats!" At the end of the night he begrudgingly handed me over £210 and said "Of course you were completely unsuitable." But how the hell did these people know to come if they'd never booked me? The truth is, they just didnt want people in they didn't know. They were running the club for the dreaded committee.'

Michael Chapman's career kicked off durint the '60s as part of the legendary drug-tinged Cornish folk mafia that included Ralph McTell and Wizz Jones. In the wake of Bob Dylan and the pill, folk music was cutting-edge stuff and just about anything went. 'The first time I walked into this club I didn't know what to expect.' Michael recalls

      
 
TUNINGS AND GUITARS

'Dropped D is my favourite tuning,' Chapman reveals. 'I rediscovered it about five years ago and it's hard to get away from-it's an absolute beauty. My theory is that by just dropping it a tone you gain the use of all the bass string in that octave, which is difficult to do in normal tuning. Then you've got the top strings to play lead on with that rhythn facility on the bass. I use DADGAD for things like Shuffleboat River Farewell; Mallard is dropped D and then on Caddo Lake it's DACCGE, which is a really odd one. When I started using tunings everything came into place. Before then I could hear things but couldn't play them. They make my life easier, there's no philosophy behind it. 'I've been using a Larrivee for four years- it's so young, it still thinks it's a tree! You can just plug it into anything and off it goes. I think it has a Fishman pickup, but if it works that's good enough for me. I've also got a '68 Martin D-18 that I bought in 1968 from Guitar Village when D-18s were £70. 'I've got a couple of Strats,

including a '74 with a bullet-head truss rod that I love but no one else will tangle with. The neck's loose because I hit someone with it...it's a disgraceful looking thing. Then there's a Telecaster-no home should be without one. I bought it for £40 in bits. I've got a 1958 Gibson ES-175 with a factory-fitted Bigsby, which spends most of it's time in the studio. Andru (Michael's partner) brought me home one of those map-shaped National Glenwoods from North Carolina...it just looks so cool and plays great. I only take one guitar out with me because i'm too lasy to cart more around.
'I use a '56 Fender Deluxe and a '65 Pro Reverb and a Korg A3 in the studio: all the sounds are on a card and you just dial them up. The Pro Reverb lives in the front room because my back is just not good enough to pick it up. I used to use three Fender Dual Showmans and play in a hotel room.'

 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

'As a kid I used to walk into town just to look at this Gibson L-5. Nobody I knew had ever seen £72.'

. 'I played the first three things that came into my head; Train And The River by Jimmy Giuffre, Round Midnight by Thelonius Monk and a Jimmie Rodgers song called A Hobo's Meditation.

'At that point I wasn't even using any tunings or even the alternate-thumb method of picking-I just used that Big Bill Broonzy thumbpick on a big Harmony Sovereign that I liked because it was big and loud! Later on Ralph showed me dropped D, and I thought if you can tune one string down why not have a go at a few more?" The problem was you just didn't see any guitar players to copy. I'd heard Davy Graham playing Anji but had no idea what he was doing. People would come down to Cornwall from London and say "you must know Bert Jansch, but it was years before I heard him. People would always ask me to play Needle Of Death and I'd say No. F off. And I wouldn't if I could. Incredible to think that was all in a folk club. Back then, before the traditional people choked it to death, they would listen to anything.'

Experimentation wasn't just taking place in the folk clubs;

in an era when guitars only came in factory finish, Michael recalled the horrors of his early attempts at customisation.

I'd always been infatuated with guitars, and when I was a kid you just never saw them.' he says. 'There was a music shop in Leeds that had a gorgeous sunburst Gibson L-5 in for £72, and I used to walk into town on a Saturday afternoon just to look at this thing.

VITAL STATISTICS

Guitar: Larrivee LV-05E, '68 D-18 ,
'74 Strat, Tele, '58 Gibson ES-175

Amps: 1956 Fender Deluxe & 1965 Pro Reverb

Who Rules: Richard Thompson, Mick Ronson, Ralph McTell, John Fahey, Andy Latimer, Mike Cooper, Alamo Leal, Dave Gardner

Albums: The Journeyman Live DVD and new album Plaindealer are available via www.michaelchapman.co.uk

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2006