Media video kitThis is a transcription of the Media Video Kit that was released after the release of Beth Nielsen Chapman's self title album. In between the spoken parts, Beth plays some of the songs she is talking about. I also made several Real Audio sound clips of the whole tape in case you want to take a listen yourself. I will replace the Real Audio soundclips with another format, until then the links won't work (march 25th, 2003). |
"No system for love" 
When this album was started late '88 Jim Ed Norman signed me through the
Nashville office and he became the producer of the album and we met quit a bit and decided to do
this record uhm because I've written songs that have been hit's for country artists uhm it's a
little bit confusing but before I ever learned to how to write a country song or ever started
writing country songs I was really influenced a lot by uhm Joni Mitchell and James Taylor and
Hogy Garmicle and a lot of writers that were pop uhm and many many different types of music, and
as an artist and a writer I really came from more from the place where this album is musically.
And hmm through the process of recording, it went over a couple of years actually, we recorded
some of it in Nashville with Jim Ed producing, eh some of it I recorded in Los Angeles with Roscoe
Beck producing and then "Walk my way" was recorded by David Austin and we went to
Holland, and recorded that, which was really really great.
"Walk my way"
My songs I feel like a lot of them end up being like little lessons that I
figured out for myself and specifically these on this album. In fact it was the one thread that
I felt like float through all these songs because musically there is quit a bit of difference
between one to the other but there's this thread of something I figured out in the process of
writing it and even "Walk my way" which eh I didn't write by myself but was a real
learning experience for me and a lesson, it was a lesson in getting inside another writers
head and writing a song with them. I'm really pleased with how the song came out, I love the
song and I've ...you know... it took me longer to know it, to get to know it, to learn how to
sing it.
Now I personally write either the melody and the lyrics at the same time
which is always nice when that happens because they feel like they dropped out of the ceiling
and landed in my lap and I'm a great believer in sitting there for a certain numbers of hours
anyway ...you know... as often as possible just to put the time in I mean if I sat there for 2
hours and I haven't come up with anything it sort of like you get points for that somewhere up
on that creative tangent where writers get that stuff ...you know... it sort of drops out of
the ceiling and you know on a day when I write really fast I know that the time that I put in
to writing nothing had to do with being able to be in shape to write something fast but eh
almost all the time I have a melody first and then I write the lyrics slowly eventually over a
long period of time.
"That's the easy part"
A lot of love songs ehm come more from an entertainment value and then
others are the little lessons...you know...the struggles and I think I tend to write more of
the second type.
"I keep coming back to you"
When I start a song I have no limits on what's about and I have no limits
on ...you know... it has to be a country song or it has to be R&B or.... I just let it sort of
evolve. In the case I was writing a song for Willie Nelson it was an assignment and I was
totally thrown into this like I know this is gonna be impossible to do so why don't I try it
anyway ...you know... and then as I did it I was delighted to find that I had written a really
good song. I was happy ... but that was a whole different experience and you know the song that
I've written for this album have been ... many of them have been little seeds that sort of
sprouted and ...you know... little by little I worked on them a little bit and I wouldn't push
it ...you know... put it back down for 2 months and I got write some other stuff and come back
to it and like on "Child again" ...you know... 1991 I was fiddling around and I got
this a (Beth playing Child again tune) I got this little thing and played that for 2 or 3 months
before I said anything, vocally and there's been so many different ways that I approached it
that each song I think gonna turn out it's own little entity in it self.
"Child again"
A great song, it can be changed to country and pop...R&B ...you know...
it can be made into 3/4 walls. You can take any of the great standard songs and you can do a
country version and a pop version. So I've always been allured towards songs instead of genres
that's why I don't write one type I guess because I just can't seem to limit it like that.
"Years"
I never thought that by the time my time would come about, and I feel
like my time is now, I really do, like this is my moment to come out, at the rightful age of
34, but I would never have thought when I was learning and growing and writing and coming
along that when I arrived on the scene that I would be some what of an antic in peoples minds
I mean people say to me "Are you gonna play and sing at the same time" you know. It's
so normal to me ...you know... and it does seem to be more rare. I played on most of the cuts on
the album because if you took ... pull the faders down there would be me and a piano on most
of the cuts, or me and a guitar. And in the one ... a couple of them that aren't ... that I'm
not playing on, the part that I was playing almost exactly is on there because I was sitting
in a room and I wrote the song with just me and an instrument and the transfer ... the thing I
had to transfer to is playing with other musicians and that becomes just an absolute adventure
because then you have all of this stuff that you don't normally have. People have said that to
me how uhm how can you just go out there with a piano and sing. Uhm but that's sort of the
core of it to me, the rest of the stuff goes around that, so I can't imagine not ... not
approaching that way, it's hard for me to imagine doing it another way.
"I keep coming back to you"
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