VIA PRESS RELEASE | Three-time Grammy winner Tom Chapin and his daughters Abigail and Lily, aka the Chapin Sisters, offer 30 minutes’ worth of kid-friendly music with Mornings with Papa Tom Chapin and the Chapin Sisters. The show streams daily weekday mornings at 11:00AM EDST on Facebook and Instagram. All episodes are archived on YouTube.
Quarantined together in the elder Chapin’s Hudson Valley home, the three Chapins stream live from his living room, performing songs from Tom’s thirteen classic albums of Children’s Music as well as classics from the American Folk Music canon. The show provides lighthearted but intelligent entertainment for all generations, a perfect opportunity for families to gather and enjoy each other’s company.
Abigail and Lily both have four-year old daughters, home from pre-school and too young to be occupied by Zoom School, Google Classroom and so on and they have many friends in the same boat. “We saw a need for some entertainment for kids their age and older, engaging kids along with their parents. At first we thought this would be for a week or two, but we are kept motivated by the daily responses and requests. We’ve been asking people to share the names of loved ones who are Essential Workers, and we thank them live by name every day.”
“I wanted to keep busy,” adds Tom, “and share these songs that I’ve written with my amazing collaborators over the last 30 years. I’ve been a working touring musician for more than half a century, and being stuck at home is uncharted territory, but as always the music and a chance to sing with my daughters keeps me sane, healthy and happy.”
Tom Chapin has carved out two parallel careers in folk music – as a gifted folk-based singer/songwriter as well as “the Pied Piper” of family music. He started singing and playing guitar in a trio with his musical brothers Harry and Steve, inspired by the recording “The Weavers at Carnegie Hall.” Tom released his first solo work in 1976. Since then he’s released 25 more and given thousands of live performances, including innumerable benefit concerts. He’s appeared frequently on TV and radio, in documentary and feature films, and is a beloved narrator of children’s books.
Tom is a long-time board member of WhyHunger, which seeks innovative “community-based solutions to hunger & poverty,” remains active in a variety of environmental causes, and is a strong voice on behalf of music and the arts in our public schools.
Raised in New York’s Hudson Valley, the Chapin Sisters are third generation musicians: their grandfather was the jazz drummer Jim Chapin, their uncle the late folk icon/humanitarian Harry Chapin, Tom’s brother. They started singing professionally at ages 6 and 8. Soon after, they began performing live at the annual concerts for Harry Chapin’s food justice organization Why Hunger.
In 2004, after relocating to Los Angeles on a whim, they recorded a couple of songs with their half-sister Jessica. A friend passed their demo onto KCRW and almost instantly their dark, moody cover of Britney Spears’s “Toxic” became one of the most requested songs at the station.
In the last decade, the Chapin Sisters have released 4 full-length albums. They’ve been featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition, in Rolling Stone, Nylon, Spin, Paper, The New York Times, T Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post and have toured the world multiple times on their own and twice as members of She & Him’s band. After taking some time off to savor the joys of becoming first time mothers, they wrote, recorded and released their most recent EP “Ferry Boat.”
