“I haven’t really done press in a long time,” Tracy Chapman said as she settled onto a bench in the courtyard of San Francisco’s stately Fairmont Hotel earlier this week, wearing a black beanie over her pulled-back, gray-flecked dreads.
Over the past decade, the singer and songwriter has remained nearly silent, though the past two years have brought renewed fervor for her tenderhearted folk music. In 2023, Luke Combs released a smash cover of her 1988 debut single, “Fast Car,” and the two performed a deeply stirring duet at last year’s Grammys. Still, Chapman has remained resolutely out of the public eye, passing on interviews about the second life of “Fast Car” and declining to show up at the Country Music Awards, where it took song of the year, making her the first Black woman, and Black songwriter, ever to win a CMA.
But Chapman, 61, agreed to this interview because she wants to talk about something she is particularly excited about: the vinyl reissue of her multiplatinum self-titled debut, which arrived on Friday. “This is an opportunity for me to be able to say why I wanted to do this project and what it means to me,” she said, “instead of letting the chatter speak for myself.”
Flowers bloomed around her in rich shades of lilac and orange, but Chapman was attired in unobtrusive neutrals: a pale pink button-up under a black zip-up sweater beneath a casual, blazer-like jacket. (“The key to your comfort is to have layers,” she said of her longtime home city’s fickle climate.) Over an hour, she spoke about the album, and also much more — like that emotional Grammy performance (afterward, she “was weepy for weeks”), her penchant for notebooks (she recommended Roland Allen’s “The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper”), her disinterest in streaming music and the current state of that elusive shadow her best songs have always chased: the American dream.
For a figure who has become better known for her reserve than her public statements, Chapman was remarkably warm and open, quick with an easy, amiable laugh. She is a thoughtful and considered talker, speaking in full sentences that sometimes pause for long parenthetical asides, yet always close cleanly, returning to her original point.
Released when she was 24, her self-titled album introduced Chapman as a poetic, socially conscious lyricist and an uncommonly affecting vocalist in command of a deep, haunting alto. With sparse arrangements driven by Chapman’s acoustic guitar playing, the music on “Tracy Chapman” tackled injustice head on: “Across the Lines” is an autobiographical tale of segregation and racial strife; the bracing a cappella track “Behind the Wall” takes a hard look at domestic violence and the indifference of the police. Chapman’s knack for vividly bringing her all-too-human characters to life kept the album from feeling one-dimensional or didactic. It has also, nearly four decades later, kept these songs feeling fresh.
Chapman’s debut means so much to her in part because its overnight success, buoyed by a star-making performance at a televised benefit concert for Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday, gave her the power to erect certain boundaries around her personal life. In recent years, she has not been interested in touring (she hasn’t booked one since 2009) or even releasing new music (her most recent album, “Our Bright Future,” was issued the year before). When she made an offhand remark about missing instant feedback from audiences, she quickly batted away a follow-up question about whether she was considering touring: “No, no, not until I put out something new.”
But perhaps that day will eventually come, since she is, as ever, working on new material. “Whether or not I’m in the studio or going on tour, I’m always writing, always playing, always practicing,” she said. “It really is fundamental to who I am, and I think about music all the time.”
“I play it and I sing, probably annoying people around me,” she added. When I suggested that people around her were probably more than happy to hear her voice, she smiled. “I hope so.”
These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
How long have you been working on this reissue?
In 2022, I wrote a note to the president of the label to ask if this was something he would consider. The idea originally was that the record would come out in its 35th year. But as you know, and anyone who can do math realizes, this is 37, and here we are. [Laughs] We just ran into a number of snags along the way. I listened to every test pressing.
What was it like living with this material again?
It’s kind of surreal. It’s a little like “Groundhog Day.” Didn’t I just listen to this entire record yesterday for a couple hours? You’re trying to listen for technical issues. So that’s separate than what or how it makes you feel. But it took me back to my studio time with David Kershenbaum, who was the producer of the first record, and then to some extent thinking about when I wrote some of the songs. I didn’t allow myself to have too many moments of nostalgia.
You were so young when you created some of those songs — 16 when you wrote “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution.”
I started writing songs when I was 8 years old, and it was just one of these things that I honestly think was in my DNA. I come from a musical family: My mother sings, my sister sings, so music was in the fabric of my life. But for it to be the thing that altered the course of my life, in such a substantial way —
I felt like I was on a path to improving my situation when I was able to go to college. My mother always thought it was very important that me and my sister go to college. And we managed to do that, through scholarships, grants, all that sort of thing. I graduated with my major in anthropology, which was going to make me a lot of money. [Laughs] To even get to that point was a significant accomplishment for someone coming from a working-class background in Cleveland, Ohio.
I read somewhere that though you were offered a record deal before you finished college, you told the label, “Hold on, let me graduate first.”
Yeah. I actually had a few random offers when I was in school, at Tufts. I would street perform in Cambridge and the subway whenever I had time to do it. Someone from Warner Music dropped their business card in my guitar case. At first I was like, “Eh, I don’t know if this is a real thing.” And I called the number, and he turned out to be who he said he was. And then I had another offer from Argentina, and I passed on that as well. Once I was out of college, there were also a few folk labels.
I ultimately chose this production company that was owned by a fellow student at Tufts, his father, Charles Koppelman. And I signed with them, and then they shopped my demo tape to various record labels. Bob Krasnow, at Elektra, he gave it the go.
When you were playing on the street, were you performing some of the songs that would be on your debut album?
Yeah. I played some traditional folk songs, but I was mostly playing my original songs.
Had you written “Fast Car” at that point?
I actually didn’t write “Fast Car” until after I had the record deal. I was in this holding pattern where we were trying to find a producer.
Did suddenly having a record deal alter your writing process at all?
It didn’t. “Fast Car” was just written in the same way that I wrote everything else. Just playing, singing, late at night, early in the morning, and just working something through. I feel fortunate that I didn’t ever feel pressured by the label or my managers or anyone to try to write something that would be a hit. I don’t even know that I have that capability, so it’s good they didn’t ask.
I know you read a lot as a child, and are still an avid reader. You’ve said that writers inspired you more than other musicians when you were starting out.
I still stand by that. I think there’s some assumption with me that I’m coming out of the ’60s folk tradition. You can slot me in there, but it wasn’t my foundation. I wasn’t aware of that music in Cleveland in the ’70s, as a young Black girl. It just wasn’t on my radar. As the youngest in the family, I also never had control of the stereo. And I didn’t have any money, so it wasn’t like I was going out and buying records. I listened to the radio all the time. I listened to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 countdown, and I used to record it, actually, on a little steno tape recorder.
But I grew up across the street from a public library, and it was the only place my mom would let me go on my own. I loved books, but to be able to do anything alone when you’re a kid, you’re going to take that opportunity. It was my second home, and I read everything that I could get. I especially loved poetry. People like Nikki Giovanni and Gwendolyn Brooks and Rudyard Kipling. I’d take out anthologies and I had a little notebook, and if there was something I really liked or felt inspired by, I would write the part of the poem out. I think I quoted Nikki Giovanni for my high school yearbook. My other quote is a little embarrassing: Father Guido Sarducci, because I loved “Saturday Night Live” and thought he was an awesome character. [Laughs]
Thinking about the writing on this album, the language is so simple and straightforward. Part of the power of “Fast Car” is that anyone can understand those lyrics. It’s speaking to something universal.
Someone was asking me recently, how do you know when a song is finished? There’s a different answer for every song. With a song like “Fast Car,” it’s narrative. It’s a story. And so, once you answer the questions about who it’s about, what they’re doing or where they’re going, and if you’re satisfied with those answers, then you’ve come to the end. And because it’s a song, you’re thinking about the song structure as well. Although, a lot of my song structure is very unorthodox, and I think that’s another thing that indicates that I was not listening to a lot of songwriters in order to hone my craft. There are some standard practices that I’ve just ignored. When you play by yourself, you can do whatever you want. In part, that shaped the way that I developed.
Ultimately, a song has to make sense. That, for me, is a test. And I’ve certainly written songs that don’t. [Laughs] I think I’ve mostly not put them out in the world but, you know. It happens. But I’ve always had a listener, in the way that some writers have a reader, and my sister has been that person for me since the beginning. I think she has an innate sense of what is musical, and she always told me the truth.
What was it like, after so many years of not touring, to be back onstage at the Grammys with Luke Combs, and for your performance to be received so warmly?
I mean, in a word, it was great. It was awesome. It was a very emotional moment for so many reasons. Luke is a lovely person. Before deciding to do it, we had a good talk, and we were both on the same page about how we would approach it. That was where it all had to start.
I don’t remember the last time I toured. And when you don’t tour, you also don’t have crew. But the awesome thing was that everyone I called to help with this — they showed up.
And so I was weeping, truthfully, when I walked into the rehearsal space. Because Denny Fongheiser, who played drums on the record, Larry Klein who played bass and David Kershenbaum, we were all reunited. I’ve seen all of them through the years at various points, but I think that was the first time we were all together in the same room. Joe Gore also played, and he’s been in my touring band, and Larry Campbell, who played fiddle.
Was that your idea, to bring the original band back together?
Yeah. And my crew. I’ve had some guys that I’ve worked with through the years, for sound and lights, and they all showed up. So, emotionally, that was really something.
With that album, it was such an intimate setting, the way that David arranged things. Because I was a solo artist and I’d never played with a band, he was worried that I wouldn’t be able to play in time. Which is totally understandable! He also understood that a lot of the direction and the arrangements for the songs, there were hints of it in the parts that I played. You kind of can’t strum a guitar on every beat, just chugging along for every song. You have to figure out a way to create dynamics and movement, and do something to match the guitar and the voice.
My time wasn’t that bad. But still, it moves on the record. It’s not so much movement that it’s distracting, where you’re like, oh my God, that just sped up or slowed down in some really uncomfortable way. But there was no click track, most records these days are made that way.
So, all those people showed up for the Grammys, and I’m so grateful for that. I did everything that I could to prepare myself for the performance.
Were you aware of the audience reaction?
Yeah, I felt it. Mostly when I’m playing, you want to engage, but at the same time, not too much so that you get distracted and you’re not focused on what you’re doing. But I sensed it. I think some part of it, too, is that, it was fun! The crazy thing about events like that is that, you plan and you plan and you plan — it took a lot to put the whole thing together — and then it’s just over in an instant. And in the immediate aftermath, you don’t know what you’ve done. But I knew that we pulled it off.
How has it felt to have Luke’s version out there, and to have “Fast Car” be considered a country song? Is that something you ever dreamed of?
No, I didn’t ever dream of “Fast Car” being a country song, but — I’ll say this, and I said this to Luke, too — it’s a bit of a full-circle moment for me. Because I started playing guitar when I was really young, and I think the reason I wanted to play guitar was because I saw “Hee Haw.” My mom really loved it, and I loved the guitars, the sound, the look.
So I’ve never thought of myself as a country musician, but that is certainly why I was drawn to wanting a guitar. My mom had bought me a ukulele when I was younger, and I had the clarinet, and I played a little on the organ, but the guitar was the thing that I chose for myself.
But I think the thing that’s making this connection is that “Fast Car” is a story song, and that’s the foundation of a lot of country music. I never pay too much attention to genre, personally. I don’t find it relevant or that interesting. It’s a pleasant surprise that the song has found this new home. I wouldn’t have predicted that’s where it would go, but the song has been covered quite a bit, and there’s dance versions of it. I can’t say I would have thought of that either!
There’s a real sense of class consciousness on that first album, which is not always something you hear much in American popular music.
There’s some part of me that’s in everything that I write. On occasion — like “Across the Lines” — it’s autobiographical, but mostly it’s not. I’m an observer. When I was a kid, I used to tell these stories at the dinner table. There’s something in me that likes telling stories, and maybe even to some extent, though I would deny it, that is also interested in entertaining people. [Laughs]
I grew up in a working-class family and was very much aware of the struggles that my mom encountered as she was raising me and my sister. There were other people in my family who were working in blue-collar jobs as the industrial economy was starting to fail and fade. As a kid, I don’t think I had any sense of the politics of that, but through osmosis you’re picking up on the stress or the concerns that the grown-ups around you have.
That’s why my 16-year-old self wrote “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution,” because that was the world that I knew. That working people were struggling. It wasn’t class consciousness at the time. These were the people I cared about, right? So I’m trying to understand them, and I’m trying to paint a picture in these songs about what life is like. And I think in part, I didn’t see much around me that did reflect that. Though I do think there are songs in the R&B tradition that deal with social issues and class — Stevie Wonder, he’s definitely written songs about that, or Curtis Mayfield.
Reissuing this album in this moment, it’s still so relevant, which is sometimes depressing. But it also speaks to the power of the songs.
I was saying to someone recently, who expressed something similar, that there’s a part of me that wishes certain songs on the record were not relevant right now. My expectation was that we wouldn’t be here. I really believed we were going to be in a better place, with more justice and more equity and less violence.
But I think, between the 16-year-old who wrote “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution” and the 61-year-old sitting here with you now, that my values are the same. I still have the same concerns. I still want the same changes that I did at that time. But I certainly have a different perspective. Having grown up in the ’70s and being a beneficiary of the civil rights movement, at a time when things started to look up, I think my expectation was that we’d just keep building on that.
I was recently watching a documentary about [the civil rights activist] Fannie Lou Hamer, and she’s from Mississippi. My grandparents are from Mississippi, and I think I hadn’t really made the connection that in the 1960s, Black people in Mississippi still didn’t have the right to vote. My grandparents left the South in the Great Migration and moved to Cleveland. I think it changed the course of their lives, but it ultimately changed the course of mine, too.
The thing that I take from it is that, now that I’m older, is that it’s this constant practice that needs to occur. A constant vigilance. You can’t expect that things will hold.
Has that fueled what you’ve been writing lately?
I’m not writing songs like that, but I am writing. I’m still writing story songs. I know that I have been labeled as a protest singer, and it’s not a label that I accept. I’m not mad at it, but it doesn’t fully represent what I do or how I think about myself. I have been lucky in that I get to make a living by pursuing a creative endeavor and letting my mind go where it wants and create these characters like the ones in “Fast Car.” Because I hope everybody knows it’s not me. [Laughs] I was not, at 24, married with a couple kids — not that there’s anything wrong with that, but this is a work of fiction in that regard. I did, however, feel like I wanted to be someplace where I had connection and a sense of belonging, and that’s the thing in the song that’s me, 100 percent.
Do you listen to new music? Are there any artists you appreciate right now?
I do listen to music still. I don’t listen to as much as I used to, and I’m maybe going to date myself now, or someone’s going call me a Luddite, but I don’t stream music. I only buy music in physical form. Artists get paid when you actually buy a CD or the vinyl. That’s important to me. So to some extent, it limits what I listen to, because it’s a physical commitment of going out into the world and finding things, but I still do go out.
I don’t know if I have anyone in particular to call out. The last Grammys, I thought that was pretty awesome, all the young women in all their variety, doing their things.
Like Chappell Roan?
Yes, and Charli XCX. It’s not music that I would make, but I appreciate that we’re in this moment where there’s a path for artists like that, and they can even have success.
Lindsay Zoladz is a pop music critic for The Times and writes the subscriber-only music newsletter The Amplifier. More about Lindsay Zoladz
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