Michael Chapman (1941-2021) released his debut album Rainmaker in 1969 on Harvest. He went on to release over fifty albums and influence many with his evocative songwriting and guitar prowess. From heady jams to expressive ballads to experimental noise, Chapman’s work continues to inspire. Tompkins Square recruited Henry Parker to curate a collection of covers by working musicians from Chapman’s home turf in Northern England. With stunning artwork by local artist Bunty Marshall mapping the important places in Michael’s life, this 12th volume of Tompkins Square’s Imaginational Anthem series is the ultimate tribute to a very dearly missed artist.

Notes from Henry Parker: Tompkins Square approached me in Autumn 2022 about putting together a tribute album to Michael Chapman who had passed away one year ago, on my birthday, in 2021. I remember it well; Michael Chapman had always been a huge inspiration to me since starting out on the acoustic guitar and was the first artist I had heard who played the instrument with that heavy thumb, drop tuned sound. I first got the chance to see him live at the Bradford experimental music festival Threadfest in 2015 and then went on to watch him play many more times, in the northern towns of Halifax, Hebden Bridge and Preston, also getting the chance to support him on a couple of his Yorkshire dates in 2018, in Saltaire and his hometown of Leeds. With both Michael Chapman and myself proudly coming from the county of Yorkshire in northern England, Tomkins Square and I decided to make this compilation decidedly Yorkshire focused, bringing together seven other artists from the county who have drawn influence from the profound music of this man.

[For those who don’t know, Yorkshire is an area that spans much of northern England, with its people taking great pride in the county, never too seriously, and poking fun at the “soft south” or it’s near neighbour Lancashire.] Michael’s sound always spanned from introspective folk songwriting to more experimental forms and naturally so does this album, created for Tompkins Square. When it came to choosing musicians to contribute to the record, I was grateful for the Yorkshire limitation on who I could draw from, as the resulting album is comprised of eight artists, who have all shared stages with each other across the folk and experimental scenes in the area. The lack of “bigger” names on the record feels natural, there’s no ego about this project as there never was with Michael, who always seemed content touring the smaller clubs and making records for anyone who was interested.

The artwork for the project came together organically, and firmly within the Yorkshire cottage industry. Two months before I was asked to put this album together, I had played a show in Leeds for the launch of a new zine, centred on folklore and mythology. The artist and founder of the zine Bunty has an exceptional eye for detail and a profound love of Yorkshire landscape and culture. Her intricate maps and illustrations created for ‘Hwaet’ zine were the perfect starting point the for this record, and the cover art and inner sleeve is an ocean of detail for Michael Chapman’s incredible life, music and his connection to Yorkshire.

TRACK LISTING

In The Valley - Henry Parker
Caddo Lake - Dean Mcphee
You Say - Katie Spencer
Heat Index - Bobby Lee
March Rain - Holly Blackshaw
(some) Trains - Andrew Dr Abbott
Kodak Ghosts – Hawthonn
Among The Trees - Chris Brain

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2022 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

The Classic 1977 Folk album now reissued on 180m gram vinyl. Feat: Mick Ronson (David Bowie) Andy Latimer (Camel) & Keef Hartley. Insert with extensive sleeve notes by Andru Chapman. Recorded during 1977 at Sawmills Studios, Cornwall, Tapestry Studios, London and Fairview Studios, Hull. Michael Chapman - Guitar and vocals. Keef Hartley - Drums. Rod Clements - Bass. Pete Wingfield - String Synthesiser (Track 1), Organ (Track 2) and Electric Piano (Track 3). Johnny Van Derek - Violin (Track 1). John McBurnie and Vivienne McAuliffe - Backing vocals (Tracks 1,5,6 and 8). Mick Ronson - Guitar (Track 2). Andy Latimer - Electric Guitar Intro (Track 3) and Guitar (Track 9). B.J. Cole - Steel Guitar (Track 5,6,7,8,10).

The legendary Guitarist chooses tracks from his two Americana albums and releases them on 180 gram 12” vinyl, featuring extensive sleevenotes.

Michael also took the photograph for the front cover.

TRACK LISTING

Swamp
Ponchateulah
Caddo Lake
Anything But The Blues
Blues For The Mother Road
When Dottie Goes Dancing
Apache Creek
Looking For Charlie In Nogales
Dust Devils
So Many Echoes

The masterful follow-up to his universally celebrated 2017 album 50, Michael Chapman’s True North finds the elder statesman of British song writing and guitar plumbing an even deeper deep and honing an ever keener edge to his iconic writing. This authoritative set of predominantly new, and utterly devastating, songs hews to a more intimate sonic signature—more atmospheric, textural, and minimalist than 50, stately and melancholy in equal measure. Recorded in rural West Wales, True North unflinchingly surveys home and horizon, traveling from the Bahamas to Texas to the Leeds of Chapman’s childhood, haunted by the mirages of memory and intimations of mortality. Joining him on this introspective journey is a cast of old friends and new disciples: once again Steve Gunn produces and plays guitar, and fellow UK song writing hero Bridget St John sings, collaborating with cellist Sarah Smout and legendary pedal steel player BJ Cole, who has accompanied everyone from John Cale to Scott Walker, Elton John to Terry Allen, Felt to Björk.

The album begins with the gnawing regret of “It’s Too Late,” and every song Chapman sings thereafter directly references the passing of time—its blind ruthlessness, its sweet hazy delights in noirish language almost mystical in its terseness and precision. (The two transportive, gorgeous instrumentals, one per side, both have appropriately evocative—though decidedly not Northern—pastoral place names for titles: Eleuthera is an island in the Bahamas where Chapman habitually holidays every winter, and Caddo Lake straddles the border between Texas and Louisiana.) This is Chapman at his darkest and most nocturnal, yes, but also his most elegant and subtle, squinting into the black hours with an unseen smile. By the time True North is out in the world, Chapman will be seventy-eight years old and will have released nearly as many records, a staggering achievement. True North represents the most nakedly personal album of his career, his most authoritative, unguarded, and emotionally devastating statement. His universally celebrated full-band 2017 album 50 flirted with much-deserved triumphalism, offering a retrospective of his illustrious career, revisited in the company of the fellow UK song writing hero Bridget St John and a rowdy gang of younger acolytes including Steve Gunn, James Elkington, and Nathan Bowles. The production hearkens back to Chapman’s classic Millstone Grit (1973), as well as recalling Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind (1997); True North shares something of that album’s spectral gloaming, midnight heartache, and sly, self-knowing winks. Compared to 50, these recordings feel narrower in range, less overtly narrative and dynamic and more impressionistic and restrained, but they are correspondingly more piercing and arrow-like in their rending impact, more concerned with an archer’s deadeye aim than pyrotechnics. Whereas 50 featured two new songs among radical reinterpretations of material from Chapman’s deep catalogue, True North includes twice as many new numbers among its quiver of eleven arrows—“It’s Too Late,” “Eleuthera,” the fiery “Bluesman,” and slow-rolling album centre piece “Truck Song”—confirming the exultant return of Chapman the songwriter. The other songs were selected from various obscure corners of Chapman’s vast catalogue (“Youth Is Wasted on the Young” was previously recorded with Thurston Moore and Jim O’Rourke for a compilation, for example.) In these renderings they receive their definitive treatments, utterly transformed.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Chapman once again providing a tender but devastatingly evocative suite of brittle acoustic numbers, slowly strummed or skilfully picked cascades of guitar, all topped with Chapman's husky but perfectly fitting vocal accompaniment. Encompassing aspects of outsider folk and campfire revelry with the characteristic shadowy acoustic undercurrent inherent in all of his work. Quintessentially Chapman.

TRACK LISTING

A1. “It's Too Late” 4:25
A2. “After All This Time” 4:06
A3. “Vanity & Pride” 3:34
A4. “Eleuthera” 2:50
A5. “Bluesman” 3:35
A6. “Full Bottle, Empty Heart” 3:20
B1. “Truck Song” 6:08
B2. “Caddo Lake” 5:55
B3. “Hell To Pay” 4:13
B4. “Youth Is Wasted On The Young” 4:02
B5. “Bon Ton Roolay” 2:43

In late 2015 Three Lobed Recordings was proud to release the Parallelogram, a collection of five carefully assembled split albums celebrating complementary musical pairings.

These lavishly presented paired LPs included numerous luminaries of the underground and alternative scenes. Previously only sold as a full five LP collection, Three Lobed is releasing very limited quantities of these five LP at this time in a standalone fashion.

TRACK LISTING

I Wish I Had Not Said That
Still Life Blues
Smoke Rings
Another Story
The Mallard
Vanity And Pride
Stockport Monday(homage Tom Rush)