In today's Houston Chronicle -

Feb. 26, 2004, 4:35PM

Ego blow pushed Jen Chapin into singing career
By DAVID BAUDER
Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK -- With an Ivy League education and experience as a teacher and hunger activist, a career in music wasn't necessarily Jen Chapin's first choice.
Associated Press
Jen Chapin released her debut Linger, a singer-songwriter set influenced by jazz and soul, this month.


Then the funk-inspired party band that she sang with dumped her, and the rejection stung far more than she anticipated.

"I'd always been involved in music as a hobby and I just realized it was more crucial to my life than that," she said. "I didn't want to be that dispensable. It made me dig in and decide to study music a bit more."

Chapin, 32, released her debut CD Linger, a singer-songwriter set influenced by jazz and soul, this month. The disc's title comes from Little Hours, its first song and most memorable melody, about resisting the urge to hurry through life.

It's an appropriate philosophical statement for Chapin, said John Scher, veteran concert promoter and co-owner of Chapin's label, Hybrid Recordings.

"Reluctant pop star is the wrong word," he said. "But she's taken her time and she's measured what she wants to do with her life more than any other musician I've ever seen."

That ultimately gives her songs a depth of experience that younger artists can't match. Chapin has the chance to be the type of songwriter that fans can grow with over time, Scher said.

Along with love songs, Chapin sings about soulless teenage boys, a childhood friend who died at the World Trade Center and the vastness of her adopted New York City. In Passive People, she gently prods a disengaged citizenry to get involved in their country.

Chapin's dad, the late folk singer Harry Chapin, would have loved that song. Chapin heads the board of directors for World Hunger Year, a non-profit organization founded by her father.

Although Chapin used one of her father's old guitars on Linger, he had less to do with her musical upbringing than her older brothers' disco records. Harry Chapin died in a car accident in 1981, before his daughter became a teenager.

The biggest advantage to growing up in a musical family -- uncle Tom Chapin is a successful singer of children's songs -- is an acceptance of being an artist and a certain fearlessness, she said.

"There's a small, but significant, group of people across the country and abroad who are sort of rooting for me, fans of my dad's," she said.

"I'll do a show in a coffee house before 20 people, and 15 of them will be Harry Chapin fans," she said. "I'm really looking forward to that changing, but that's the way it's been so far. I really can't complain; it's part of who I am."

If her dad was still alive, Chapin believes she probably wouldn't be a musician.

"He would have been too much in my face," she said with a chuckle. "That was his personality. He would have been like, `Go, Jen!'"

Chapin is friendly but guarded. It's only after extensive discussion about the prominent role of the bass guitar in her music does she let slip that the bass player, Stephan Crump, is also her husband.

During the years she methodically developed her music, Chapin also created, and taught in Brooklyn, a curriculum about black music and its role in history.

Her music marries those interests with a singer-songwriter sensibility.

"I've always loved that acoustic thing, where you get to create something out of silence, out of tension," she said.

The writing process terrifies her, she said, "because I'm still not completely believing that I'm getting away with it. I haven't done any serious collaborations. I want a song to be totally my own. That's sort of frowned upon in the songwriting world, where there is a high value placed on collaborations and being open to different ideas."

That's one key difference between her and a fellow musical traveler, Norah Jones, who uses her own songs, songs from her band and covers. Chapin and Jones come from the same New York music scene, and the same drummer played on both of their debuts.

While Jones' music may be a reference point for some fans, Chapin cautions against a comparison.

"Her (debut CD) you could put it on, leave it on, have dinner," she said. "I think mine is a little more bumpy, so I don't know if it's going to hit the same sweet spot. I think it's got more claws or something."

One of the most personal, and specific, songs on Chapin's CD is Hurry Up Sky, dedicated to her friend, Kristy Ryan, who worked on the 104th floor of the North tower at the World Trade Center.

Chapin spent much of her time the weeks after the terrorist attack with Ryan's family; she played in a high school band with Ryan's widower.

Now, she said she feels almost "painfully distant" from the song, largely because the spirit of community the tragedy fostered is gone. "It was a sacred time," she said. "It was a time of possibilities."

"I don't think about Kristy every day, like I used to," she said. "When I sing that song, that's my time. That's my prayer. I get to picture her and keep her alive for three and a half minutes."

The song, and Chapin's album, may never have happened if it hadn't been for that old band that decided to break up, then reform without her. It was ultimately a motivator.

"I pity the people who have never had the blow to the ego, who have never been dumped," she said.