Remembering Thomas ChapinTerri Castillo-Chapin – September 1999 (From The Thomas Chapin: Alive boxed set liner notes)

For those of us who knew him, Thomas Chapin was the most alive person we had ever met. In every area of life, his intense and kinetic energy opened, expanded and changed the being of anyone near him. When he would animatedly talk about the music of Africa, his trip through Moroccan desert towns, an exotic whistle just added to his Acme collection or the way a cat purred under his touch, he opened you to worlds of wonder, making you see as he saw. And if you were in the audience absorbing his sometimes manic, sometimes exquisitely painful, sometimes joyfully raucous melodies, your insides tingled and exploded, as one friend put it, “into one delirious orgasm after another.”

While he radiated joy on the outside, privately he penetrated deep within his soul, seeking that hallowed place which grounded and connected him to a higher purpose. Yet Thomas Chapin was no saint. He was multifaceted and contradictory. Restless and searching, he was most at home in motion – not unlike Hank Williams’ Ramblin’ Man, a tune Thomas loved to hear and sing. You couldn’t pin him down and he liked it that way. When he titled one of his CDs You Don’t Know Me, he was sending a direct message about himself.

Thomas Chapin was a jokester, a trickster. His sense of humor was tireless, his wit was rapid-fire, and his diabolical laugh was unforgettable. He liked to catch you off guard, give you what you least expected and watch the surprised look on your face. This was all done playfully and with intent – he was watching to see if you were awake and paying attention. He had little patience for the humdrum, the mediocre, the norm. And yet he loved simplicity and the ordinary, where he often found treasures most people overlooked.

Thomas liked his privacy and solitude. Too much activity and mass confusion, and he happily retreated to a quiet place to puff a big, fat Cuban cigar and contemplate the beautiful blue sky or an after-midnight snowfall. In music as in life, he was intense and passionate about everything. “I love my life!” he often exclaimed. And although he didn’t know it then, in what was to be his final year, he would say, “I’ve had a great life.”

In the end, Thomas Chapin was a huge spirit, and each of us who knew him or heard him play carry a piece of him with us. While Thomas is no longer in our midst, through our memories and his music, he is alive and present, as near as our breath. In this boxed set, Thomas Chapin Alive, you will meet him again and feel his fiery spirit – ever vibrant, ever exuberant, ever outrageous. I can almost hear him say, with a wink, “Catch me – if you can.”

With gratitude,
Terri Castillo-Chapin

All albums previously released on Knitting Factory Records are now the sole property of and available through Akasha, Inc. Some rare copies of ALIVE 8-CD Boxed Set is available for a donation at this website. Go to Akasha/Donate to Akasha.