Marshall Chapman

The majority of her 250 songs have been recorded by artists such as Emmylou Harris, John Hiatt, Wynonna, Joe Cocker, Jimmy Buffett, Tanya Tucker, Olivia Newton-John, Sawyer Brown, Mindy McCready, Greg "Fingers" Taylor, Ronnie Milsap, and The Uppity Blues Women. She has toured extensively and opened shows for a variety of artists from John Prine and Jimmy Buffett to Jerry Lee Lewis to The Ramones.

Raised a debutante in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the daughter of a mill owner, Chapman dove into music at a time when women weren't yet picking up electric guitars. She is "a living example," one reviewer wrote, "of the triumph of rock and roll over good breeding."

Chapman attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, not for its fine academic reputation, but more for the location and title of "Music City U.S.A." After graduating, she waited tables by day and sang at bars at night.

Her first record, Jaded Virgin, was voted Record of the Year by Stereo Review, followed by Take It on Home. She founded her own recording label, Tall Girl, and released Dirty Linen and Inside Job. Her first live album, It's About Time, was recorded at the Tennessee State Prison for Women and received rave reviews from Time, USA Today, and The Village Voice. Her newest record, Love Slave, is considered her most mature, musically diverse effort to date.

Chapman is the author of Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller, her warm and exuberant story about the places she has been, the songs she has written, and her travels. It was a 2004 SEBA Book Award finalist, and one of three finalists for the Southern Book Critics Circle Award.

Expanding into musical theater, Chapman contributed fourteen songs to Good Ol' Girls, a literary musical based on the stories of Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle. The New York Times called it a "feminist literary country music review." Chapman is now developing a one-woman show called "The Triumph of Rock and Roll Over Good Breeding."