By Paul Freeman [June 2011 Interview]

If you’re fascinated by the uniquely fertile creative atmosphere of Music City, you absolutely must immerse yourself in Marshall Chapman’s new book, “They Came To Nashville.”

Chapman, a songwriter’s songwriter, performer’s performer, offers intimate insights into the journeys of many remarkable talents.

In addition to Chapman’s own colorful recollections, the book offers wonderfully entertaining anecdotes from such Nashville greats as Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Miranda Lambert WIllie Nelson and Rodney Crowell.

Chapman, daughter of a cotton mill owner, was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina in 1949. She hit Nashville in 1967 to attend Vanderbilt University.

Though seeing Elvis Presley perform in 1957 fired her imagination, Chapman wasn’t pondering a music career when she attended college and didn’t start writing songs until 1973.

She made up for lost time. Her compositions were recorded by such artists as Emmylou Harris, Wynonna, Joe Cocker, Jimmy Buffet, Jessi Colter, Olivia Newton-John, Ronnie Milsap, Dion, Conway Twitty, John Hiatt and Irma Thomas. Chapman’s song “Betty’s Bein’ Bad” was a number one hit for Sawyer Brown.

She also recorded albums of her own. They garnered great reviews, but sold modestly. She now releases independently on her own Tall Girl label (Chapman stands six feet tall).

She hadn’t planned to make more albums, but the death of her dear friend, musician Tim Krekel, inspired her to create the critically acclaimed new “Big Lonesome.”

Chapman has hit the road again, her husband keeping her company. The past year has been an exciting one for her with “Good Ol’ Girls,” an off-Broadway musical she co-wrote (adapted from the fiction of Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle, songs co-penned by Matraca Berg) her new CD and book, as well as an impressive acting performance as Gwyneth Paltrow’s tour manager in “Country Strong.”

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
The book is a fascinating read. You knew most of these subjects well. But did you gain new insights about them when you interviewed them for the book?

MARSHALL CHAPMAN:
Yeah, like Gary Nicholson was the first interview I did, because he’s a good friend and we traveled together on the road. You travel on the road with somebody, you think you know everything about them. But I’d never asked him, ‘Hey, what was your first night in Nashville like?’ And out came that whole story of driving out to get the mattress and he happens to be buying it from a Hall of Fame songwriter.

I thought all the stories were great. I’ve known Rodney Crowell a long time. I never knew he wrecked Johnny Cash’s car. I found out a lot of things.

The original list I made was all men from Texas that were older than I, because there weren’t that many women songwriters when I came to town. There was Mary John Wilkin and there was Felice Bryant. Every now and then Cindy Walker would breeze into town. But if was Kris Kristofferson and Rodney and Guy and Townes and Billy Joe and all those guys. They were all from Texas. And I went through this phase where I wanted everybody to think I was from Texas, so I would wear cowboy boots and stuff.

PCC:
Has the city changed dramatically?

CHAPMAN:
Yeah, nowadays, I imagine half the songs are written by women. And that’s a good change. And of course, after I made that initial list, I said, ‘Wait a minute, there have been enough books written about the Texas songwriter thing. And I decided to diversify it. And then this thing with Miranda Lambert just landed in my lap.

I’m a contributing editor for ‘Garden and Gun’ and the editor of the magazine called and wanted me to interview Miranda. I didn’t really know who she was in 2008. I’d heard her name, knew she was making some noise. But I don’t really pay that much attention to what’s going on in the commercial country world here. And then, she’s in my living room and we’re talking and I liked her. She had a lot of gumption. And by then I thought, ‘I want to have as many women in this book as men.’ And so I asked her if she’d ever lived in Nashville. She said, ‘Oh, yeah. I spent a couple of lonely years in an apartment.’ And I said, ‘That’ll work.’ So we interviewed her for the book and then Terry Clark lived right across the street and I ran into her one day while I was raking leaves.

PCC:
In addition to knowing the artists better, did you end up with a different perspective on the city?

CHAPMAN:
It made it clear how different things have become. Everybody comes here in different ways. Everybody talks about how the early ‘70s were the most romantic times to be here. And I think that’s probably accurate.

Kristofferson has likened it to Paris in the ‘20s. We had our own moveable feast going on here, a lot of drugs, a lot of drinking. It was just wild then. You could just walk into a studio and say ‘Hey, listen to this.’ Of course, now you have to make appointments and no unsolicited anything.

But the perspective I got was how different it is. It used to be you came to Nashville on a bus with bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and a guitar in the other. Now you come with a briefcase in one hand and a guitar in the other.

Miranda’s story was touching in a way, because her family is so involved with her career. Her mother runs her store down in Lindale, Texas. Her father, I think, handles her merch on the road. And her brother, I think, is a real techie and does her website, keeps all that going. And I thought, ‘God, that’s so cool that your family would support you.’

Rodney and I laughed. We were a product of the ‘60s. We always say ‘The ‘70s is when the ‘60s hit the South.’ We came here to get away from our parents. It was the time of Vietnam and you didn’t trust anybody over 30.

That was a real sweet time, too. When I was talking to Miranda, I couldn’t believe she just lived in an apartment on the outskirts of town. It could have been Anywhere, U.S.A. We were all in this condemned neighborhood, near Vanderbilt. You could rent half a house for $50 a month. In my immediate neighborhood, Guy and Susanna [Clark] lived in this little pale green house less than a block away. Walter Hyatt lived in it after that, from Uncle Walt’s band, with his wife Marylou, who ended up managing Waylon. And then there was that house, the wonderful story that Rodney tells about Johnny Rodriguez walking down the street with an acetate of his first single, ‘Pass Me By, If You’re Only Passing Through.’ And he and Townes and Guy are sitting on the edge of their porch on Acklen Avenue. We were all living in the same neighborhood. And it was fun.

We were clueless. It was a real time of innocence. If people did drugs, it was to be enlightened. It was just trying to get over the Eisenhower ‘50s.

PCC:
In terms of Nashville becoming more commercial, from the outside, it seems like there are two Music Cities, the glossy hit factory and then the maverick artist community.

CHAPMAN:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. It is. And the other one is the best kept secret in the world. I just wrote an article for W magazine, my first national magazine piece. And they wanted me to write about the new Nashville, as it pertains to music. They’re going to have a music issue in July. So I’ve sort of been visiting what you’re talking about, thinking about the big picture.

But Nashville is so cool right now that I hesitate to tell people how cool it is, because I’m scared they’ll move here. And we’ve got enough high rises going up as it is. But Nashville seems to be holding onto its character. I watched it become a city. It was just a big, ol’ country town. Sleepy country town. They didn’t have liquor by the drink when I came out here.

There are so many more musicians now living here than in either New York or Los Angeles. First of all, if you’re a musician or songwriter starting out, you can’t afford to live in Manhattan anymore. You’ve got to be in Hoboken or Brooklyn or somewhere. And then, L.A. is just so spread out, it’s just not like it was in the old Palamino club days.

PCC:
With so many musicians in Nashville, don’t the newcomers find it intimidating as they try to carve out a niche?

CHAPMAN:
They don’t seem to be intimidated. I think the talent level just keeps rising. I’m always finding out about these new acts. I’m always touting them. I went out one night and heard this husband and wife, The Wrights, Adam and Shannon Wright. They write incredible songs. Paul Kennerly, the producer/songwriter who was married to Emmylou Harris took an interest in them. He was there and our jaws were just dropping open. They were gorgeous. And their harmonies were like The Everly Brothers. You’d think they were siblings, rather than spouses. And then, his guitar is like Dick Dale meets Daniel Lanois. The sound, the songs, the harmonies... it was just heaven. It’s like, ‘Holy shit!’ And you can go out any night now and there’s four or five people that good playing. The talent level is off the charts. And it’s a real cool little scene. And then there’s East Nashville, which has got its own little scene, where Todd Snider lives and Peter Cooper, our writer for The Tennessean, now he’s a great songwriter, blowing us all out of the water.

PCC:
All the talent around in Nashville, does everybody kind of feed off that?

CHAPMAN:
Yeah. One of my favorite quotes in the book is from Mary Gauthier, who’s like a worldwide troubadour. I asked her, ‘Why Nashville? Why not L.A. or New York?’ And she said, ‘I wanted to be uplifted by greatness.’ And even Bobby Bare said he put off coming to Nashville for years. And he had hits in the ‘50s, ‘Detroit City.’ He put it off for years, because all his heroes lived here and he was just too damn intimidated. So he did the L.A. thing first, then came to Nashville. And he’s been here ever since.

And Willie same deal. He was in Texas and then he went up to Portland for a while. There was a radio station up there and he worked out of there for a while. He came to Nashville in like ‘61, drove in a ‘ 51 Buick. And, in the book, he said his first night in Nashville, he went to Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge and there’s Faron Young. And there’s Carl Smith. And he was so intimidated, he just got drunk and went and lay down in the middle of Broadway, hoping a car would run over him.

PCC:
Early in your career, Al Kooper produced your “Jaded Virgin” album. Was that intimidating at all? He had James Burton on the sessions.

CHAPMAN:
James Burton played on that record. He had them put blankets up, so Al couldn’t see what he was playing, because he didn’t want Al stealing his licks.

I did three albums for Epic. Back then, you really had to be country or rock, for marketing purposes. I was sort in that place in between, not country-rock, but in a just place that’s more roots music, even then. I described myself one time, I said, ‘I’m a marketing man’s nightmare. I have an R&B soul, a rock ‘n’ roll body, a country heart and a jazz brain.

PCC:
That’s a great combination.

CHAPMAN:
Yeah, but how do you market it? Back then, it was so rigid.

PCC:
At what point did you start exploring songwriting?

CHAPMAN:
Well, that was sort of the last thing I did. I was kind of raised in the old traditional South, where expectations for women were pretty low. It was still being debated whether you should even waste money educating them.

I just loved music. And I’m out here like ‘Gidget Goes To Nashville and Gets a Record Deal.’

I didn’t write my first song till I was about 25 and I thought that was really late, because I had a band and I was playing. And I wrote about this in my first book, Danny Flowers was in my band, the guy that wrote ‘Tulsa Time.’ Eric Clapton had a worldwide hit with it. Danny was in a band I had in like 1972 and we were playing these shitty lounges, back when guys in red polyester pants with wide white belt and the white shoes with the buckle on the side, they’d come in there and get drunk, ‘Hey honey, sing ‘Rocky Top!’’

I was just having one of those nights and I’m crying in the parking lot and Danny looks at me and says, ‘Marshall, you’re going to play these shitty joints for the rest of your life, if you don’t start writing songs.’ This light bulb went off in my head. I went home that night and started writing a song called, ‘A Woman’s Heart (Is a Handy Place To Be)’ Jessi Colter ended up recording it on her second album. And it just kind of went from there.

PCC:
Was that instant validation?

CHAPMAN:
Yeah, the first 10 songs I wrote got recorded in the order that they were written. I hadn’t written that many songs. And then I put another band together and was doing original songs at this place called Mississippi Whiskers and then the people from CBS started coming in. It was some pretty heady stuff. I didn’t even know what headphones were and all of a sudden, I had a deal with CBS Records.

They never could figure out what to do with me. I did one album that they sweetened with strings and they just wanted me to do ballads and I snuck one rocker in there called ‘Rode Hard and Put Up Wet.’ And then the second album, they said, ‘Well, she’s rock.’ So they flew me out to L.A. to do that album with Al Kooper. I was trying to get from A to B and Al kind of took me to Z. I couldn’t listen to that album for years. But I’ve listened to it recently and it’s pretty interesting.

PCC:
In those times, were you rolling with the flow or was there a lot of disillusionment?

CHAPMAN:
I went through the usual things artists go through. I had high hopes and I’d get great press every time I’d put out a record, but the sales don’t reflect it, because there’s marketing confusion. So now I’m just an independent artist, doing it.

This album that we put out, we got approached my a couple of small labels that were interested in doing distribution, but when they told me what they’d be doing, we thought, ‘We can do this.’ So it’s just me and my husband doing it. We’re having fun. We had this goal. All I want to do is break even within a year, on the cost of making a record and having a real publicist on board for three months. And we had a radio promoter. So counting that expense and the recording and manufacturing expense, we’re two-thirds there.

PCC:
This album is wonderful. It’s one of your favorites?

CHAPMAN:
I’ve been saying it’s my favorite, which probably isn’t fair. The first one was kind of a favorite, because it’s like your first love. Some people have said this is the best album since my first one. I don’t know, I’ve put out 12 albums. This one definitely, it was the most focused and serendipitous album I’ve made, the way it just happened. Because I wasn’t going to do another album.

I lost $42,000 on the last studio album I put out before this one. And there are a lot of reasons for that. I was doing things the old way and the landscape was changing so fast. I said, ‘Well, I’ll never do that again.’ So I was concentrating on writing books and prose and I’ve got a couple of gigs writing for magazines. And then Tim Krekel dies. And I couldn’t stop the songs.

I would laugh and tell my friends, ‘I try not to write songs, because if they’re good, then I’m going to record them and if I record them and it sounds good, then my ass is on the road. I know how to nip this off in the bud.’ So now I’m about 10 pounds down and 62 years old and been road-doggin’ it since October.

And my husband is going with me on the road, which is just the difference between night and day. I tell people, being on the road is hell. Being on the road with somebody that really cares about you is a perverted kind of heaven.

PCC:
In the making of the album, were you conscious of it being cathartic?

CHAPMAN:
Yeah. I worked with Mike Utley before and I called Mike first. He’s produced albums on Kristofferson and Rita. He did that great TV show on Roy Orbison where they had Bruce Springsteen and all those people guesting. And we just work great together. And so my favorite studio album before this was ‘Love Slave,’ one I did on Margaritaville/Island Records. It’s a partnership Jimmy Buffet had with Chris Blackwell. I did two albums for that label in the mid-’90s.

And so I called Mike, because I loved the experience of making that record and I thought we made a pretty good record together.

The first two people I called had died within the last year. And that was my original bass player, Jackie Street, from the original Love Slaves, that was a band I had from 1990 until 2005. Jackie died in 2008. And then Tim died in 2009. So anyway, those were the first two people I would call whenever I would want to go in the studio, that I’m real comfortable with. So when I called Utley, he just said, ‘Let’s bring in Will Kimbrough.’ [Guitarist] I didn’t know Will. What I knew of him, he’s real smart. But it was great. Sometimes it’s good to get out of your comfort zone. And I think that may have had something to do with it.

Usually, girls making records, you’re looking at a roomful of guys and you’re outnumbered. That’s usually the way it is. You have to start somewhere and I hadn’t played these songs on the road, so we were woodshedding it right there in the studio and I said, ‘Well, I hear this kind of early Johnny Cash meets Dick Dale.’ So we cut this track ‘Mississippi Man in Mexico’ and it sounded good and we went to lunch. And I couldn’t eat, because I knew it wasn’t right. Everybody was high-fivin’ each other. It was a good track. When we got back to the studio after lunch, Mike says, ‘Let’s listen to it.‘ He put it on and I said, ‘Turn it off!’ I’m the girl and then everybody’s looking at me and it gets real quiet and I just said, ‘Look, let’s go recut it right now. Here’s the deal, A, it’s not sexy enough. And B, it’s not desperate enough.’ So Will just kind of copped that Pop Staples lick at the end and we just took it way down, slowed it down. And I said, ‘I don’t think we even need drums.’ So just me and the bass player and Will went in there and cut it. And I’m looking right at Will when we’re playing it. And we never ran it down. And what you hear on that record is what we cut. It was just the first take. You can tell at the end, it’s like, ‘Where do we end this?’ Finally I just threw in this little run and it’s over. And those are all original vocals, while we were tracking. And that song is a high range for me, so I was digging real deep to get it out. And I feel like that’s one of the best vocals I ever did... But what do I know?

I was really focused making this record. And real inspired. It was like I was making it for a reason, other than,’Oh, it’s time for me to make a record.’ I was making it to honor my friend. And one of the benefits of making this record, that I didn’t realize, is I never listen to albums after I make them. You’re kind of sick of them after a while. You’re ready to think about the next one. And I still have this one in my car. And every now and then I listen to it. And it’s like, when I listen to it, I’m with Tim Krekel, my friend. And I didn’t realize that that would happen. It’s kind of nice.

PCC:
After having this record come out of that emotional time, are you anticipating making another album anytime soon?

CHAPMAN:
Well, that’s what’s so funny, a girl that just announced that she was never going to do another record. And if I did, I was going to do a duet record with Tim. But I’ve been going to Mexico a lot and there’s some of that on ‘Big Lonesome.’ But I’ve already got about half of my next record. I want to do a record called, ‘ Beyond Words.’ And it’s going to be real romantic, which is just a total departure. I’m going to do my make-out record.

I think there’ll be one or two covers on it, too. I’ve spent about a month learning this song I’ve always wanted to sing, called ‘The Nearness of You,’ by Hoagy Carmichael. I wanted to do my own version of it. And then I didn’t realize, the first LP I ever bought with my allowance, when I was 14, was ‘Stay’ with Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs. And that was a huge national hit that was actually recorded in my hometown of Spartanburg, South Carolina, WSBA studio. I tell you how long ago this was, this was back in Jim Crow South, when black acts were trying to break into white America. So they wouldn’t put their pictures on the cover. This album had a white girl in a fuzzy sweater with a charm bracelet, holding a white guy’s hand. That song ‘Stay’ was track one. Track two was ‘The Nearness of You.’ And it was sort of a doo-wop version of it. And then I listened to Keith Richards’ version of it and I listened to Hoagy Carmichael’s version of it and I sort of came up with my own version. But it took me about three weeks to find all the chords.

So, yeah, I’ve just fallen in love with music again. It seems like that’s the gift that Tim Krekel has left me with.

PCC:
Music is so ingrained in you. In the book, you mention unconsciously choosing the scruffy-looking guys over the world of privilege. Was that just something inherent in you that needed to be awakened?

CHAPMAN:
Yeah. I have a song idea called ‘The Last to Know,’ as in, I’m always the last to know. I feel like that’s the story of my life, just being the last to know. I think it’s part of the human condition. Sometimes we’re the last to know what’s good for us or we’re the last to know what are true calling is in life. I tell my friends from college, I thought I was the typical Vanderbilt co-ed, just trying to fit in with everybody else. And they just burst out laughing, saying, ‘Marshall, please. We all knew that this was who you were.’ But now I know. I’m a musician. [Laughs] And a writer. Imagine that.

PCC:
And an actor

CHAPMAN:
Well, that’s what they say.

PCC:
That was a terrific performance in ‘Country Strong.’

CHAPMAN:
I’d love to do that again. That was fun.

PCC:
Were you reticent going in?

CHAPMAN:
Yeah, I was scared to death. But this was a year of doing things I’d never done before. As I say, sometimes, if you just shower and show up, good things happen.

PCC:
You lost your Dad when he was 62. Reaching that age yourself, does that make you think more about unfinished business?

CHAPMAN:
Yeah, it does. I’m very aware that my father died at that age and that I have passed that exit. I’m aware of that every day of my life. And I mean that in a real good, positive way. It’s like, I don’t want to let anything slide.

PCC:
And that’s why we’re going on the road. This traveling stuff. With Chris [her husband[, we’re enjoying the adventure of it. When I met Chris, he was traveling with this company and was used to staying in Ritz-Carltons and stuff, where they put a chocolate mint on your pillow at night. And we’re sitting in Houston at this hotel the club owner told me about, $55 a night. I don’t think they’d vacuumed under our beds in like 20 years. And with the original shag carpets from the ‘70s. This look on Chris’ face! We’d just driven in the rental car from the airport and we got to this funky place. Half the people in the hotel lived there full time. It was that kind of place.

You never eat in a hotel. But we were told there was some good Mediterranean food there. And the guy had closed. But he went in the kitchen and made us a meal, after hours. And was just so nice about it. We were stunned. It was the best Mediterranean food we’d ever had. So you just never know what you’re going to run into out there.

PCC:
So Chris wasn’t involved in the music business?

CHAPMAN:
No! That’s why we’ve been together for 20 years. He was a medical doctor by training. He was everything my mother ever wanted in a son-in-law. But I’ve kind of gotten him down on my level now. [Laughs] He graduated at the top of his class, Columbia medical school. He’s real smart. My sister married a doctor, too. It’s nice to have one in the house.

PCC:
It must have been another dream fulfilled to see ‘Good Ol’ Girls’ open in New York.

CHAPMAN:
That was just so much fun. We all went up for it. And just all stayed in the same hotel. I said, ‘Let’s all go to New York and act like we’re somebody for a night.’ And we did. They had a party and a lot of our friends were there. Roy Blount, Jr., the Southern humorist, a friend of all of ours, was there. We just had a great time.

PCC:
So as far as what’s ahead, in addition to the next album, do you think you might try another musical? A screenplay?

CHAPMAN:
You know, I’ve started writing a film script on my first book, which is called, ‘Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller.’ And I’ll turn my attention to that again. And I want to do ‘Beyond Words,’ the album.

Somebody said, ‘You’ve got to write one book of fiction.’ They said, ‘You saved the hard truth for fiction where you can really let it rip.’ To tell the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll story, it really has to be fiction, the things you couldn’t say as non-fiction or you’d be out of the will.

PCC:
You’d be up for that?

CHAPMAN:
It scares me, but I think I’d like to give it a shot. We’ll see.

PCC:
Sounds like a lot of creative excitement ahead. And you’re coming off a great year.

CHAPMAN:
2010 was the best year of my life, career-wise, without a doubt. Between the ‘Good Ol’ Girls’ opening off-Broadway and then doing my first motion picture and doing an album that I just feel proud - I don’t know, pride is a dangerous word - but I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to make that record. And I am proud of it. I’ll put it up there with anything.

It feels good. You know, there’s a lot of records I’ve made where I’ve thought, ‘If only I’d had the right producer,’ ‘If only I’d known my way around the studio better, ‘Oh, if I’d had better songs or more time to mix it.’ I have no disclaimers for this record. I really think I made the best record I could make. It might not be as good as Bob Dylan’s next record, but it’s the best record I could make in 2010. I just feel good about it. That’s a good feeling, that you don’t have to explain or write a disclaimer about anything.

And I like the way the book came out, too. I was sort of toying around with fiction when that happened. I was writing short stories. I was got a couple published in some anthologies, which got me really encouraged. But one of the short stories was about a man from a tiny town in Arkansas, a young man and his bride. They’re just married and they’re driving to Nashville, because he wants to make it as a songwriter. And it’s what happens after they get there. And it got published in this anthology that Sonny Brewer does every year, called, ‘Stories From The Blue Moon Cafe.’ And it was a real honor to be in that anthology. And I just thought, ‘Well, shit! I’ll just do 12 more stories about people coming to Nashville to make it music somehow. And I’ll call it, ‘They Came To Nashville.’ And I immediately Googled that name and I was stunned. It had never been used for anything, not even an article. And I loved the kind of sci-fi sound of it, like ‘They Came From Outer Space’ or ‘It Came From Beneath The Sea’ or that great Robert Gordon book, ‘It Came From Memphis.’ It was kind of close to that. And I liked that.

So one day, I’m sitting at my desk and I wrote the first line of the book, which is, ‘The night I met Billy Joe Shaver, my hair caught on fire.’ And I thought, ‘You know what? I don’t think I can make anything up that’s as bizarre as shit that’s really happened to me.’ And so, the minute I wrote that line, I saw this whole book. I made the list of people I wanted to interview. i made a list of the six questions, which became seven questions. And I saw the whole book. It was like, ‘Oh, shit. Now I’m going to have to write a book.’ I knew how much work that was.

PCC:
You mentioned being a late bloomer, it must be great to able to say, at this stage, this has been the best year of your career.

CHAPMAN:
Yeah. And passing that milestone, of my father, that’s always sort of loomed up there. 33, 42 and 62 were the milestones for me, because 33 is when Jesus died. 42 is when Elvis died. And 62 is when my father died. So I feel like I’m on the Enterprise right now.

40 is a tough one. When you’re in rock ’n’ roll, you think your life is over. I checked into a treatment center then. With each album with Epic, I got more and more rockin’. We had a pretty intense rock show that we were putting on. And I just was planning to go out in a blaze of glory like Janis Joplin at age 30. And then I woke up one day and I was 40 and I didn’t have a Plan B. So I checked into a treatment center.

Everybody likes to think they’re unique. but we also can be so much alike, where we just fit into the most trite adage like, ‘Life begins at 40.’ And that certainly was the case for me. And then it just got better at 50 and it even got better at 60. So I’m just trying to keep my body from falling apart.

PCC:
You can’t wait to see what’s going to happen at 70.

CHAPMAN:
I know [Laughs]. Well, I always said that the fifties was the greatest decade, because it’s almost like last call to do your life’s work, before shit starts appearing on your body uninvited... or breaking... falling off. But the body held up pretty good And I kept good care. But I’ve been on the road and I looked in the mirror the other day and way too skinny and losing a lot of muscle tone., so now I’m back at it. You’ve got to stay on top of that stuff when you get to be my age.

It becomes 90 percent deposits and 10 percent withdrawals, whereas, in your twenties, it’s 90 percent withdrawals and 10 percent deposits, as far as your health.

For much more on the marvelous Ms. Marshall Chapman, visit www.tallgirl.com.