Multiple Grammy winner comes to Peters Township
A conversation with Steven Curtis Chapman is likely to remind you more of talking with an old buddy than with a recording artist who has earned multiple Grammy awards and sold more than 11 million albums.
The humbly professed “kid from Kentucky” – others profess him as a legend in Christian music – comes across as a friendly, approachable fellow who seems as likely to ask all about your life as you are of his.
Fans who attend his Feb. 23 concert at the Bible Chapel’s South Hills campus in Peters Township will get to know his personable side as he embarks on another leg of his successful “SCC Solo” tour.
“I’ve done the big tours with the production and stage full of musicians, and sound and lights and semi trucks and buses. And it’s all been awesome and wonderful. I love those big-production concerts,” he said by phone from his home in Franklin, Tenn. “But we have a saying here in Nashville that I’ve always loved and feel is very true, and it basically says: It all begins with a song.”
Chapman is accompanying his songs simply with guitar and piano, interspersing them with stories about their origins and about his life in general, as he chronicles in “Between Heaven & The Real World,” his autobiography published last year.
“Over the years, my tours often would reflect the current season of my music, whatever the latest album is, and I’ll go back and pick a few hits over the years,” he explained. “The last three or four years, I’ve kind of entered into sort of a season, creatively and artistically, of remembering.”
At the time, Chapman was approaching the 30th anniversary of the release of his debut album, “First Steps,” in 1987. Since then, he has racked up 48 National Christian Audience charting singles, eight albums that have been certified as Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America, and two as Platinum: “Heaven In the Real World” and the highly acclaimed “Speechless.”
Many of the fan favorites from his career are featured in the SCC Solo show.
“I liken it to my version of sort of a ‘Prairie Home Companion,'” he said. “It’s music and it’s story, and it’s all of that in a night where you laugh a lot together. You certainly cry a little bit together. And it’s really been special.”
The son of Herb and Judy Chapman of Paducah, Ky., tells about coming from a musical family, with Dad teaching him Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” on guitar when he was 6. He and his brother, Herb Jr., started performing together when they were youngsters, eventually landing a job at the now-closed Opryland USA amusement park near Nashville.
Meanwhile, Steven was spending much of his free time writing songs.
“A friend of a friend who heard me at Opryland said, ‘Hey, I want to take some of your music to a good friend of mine, and he might be able to help you out,'” he recalled.
Steven and Mary Beth Chapman
The good friend turned out to be Bill Gaither, the gospel musician who wrote the title track of Elvis Presley’s album “He Touched Me.”
“Bill Gaither called me and said, ‘I like what I heard. I’d like to talk to you about publishing your songs and help you with writing.’ So that’s what really gave me my start,” Chapman said. “As a songwriter, I began to get songs recorded by other people, still hoping that maybe I’d get a chance to sing some of my songs but never imagining it would become what it has over these years.”
Beyond writing and recording inspirational music, Chapman joined with his wife, Mary Beth, to co-found Show Hope, an organization that provides financial support toward the adoption of orphans.
“It began with us realizing that there were a lot of families who would say something to us like, ‘We would love to adopt someday. We just can’t afford it,'” he explained. “And that really was how we began to dream of helping other families bring children home from wherever they are in the world.”
The Chapmans, who have adopted three girls from China, since have helped more than 6,000 families adopt children from 60 countries.
And that’s a story you’ll hear more about when Steven Curtis Chapman treats his audience like a gathering of old buddies.
For more information, visit stevencurtischapman.com and showhope.org.