chapmansmith

Brooklyn, NY, USA

I was born and raised in Sumter, South Carolina. (Slow life, not a lot to do. Lower-middle class. Not suburban but not quite country either.) I never felt like I fit in as a kid and struggled to discover my place in the world. In 2005 I formed a band with some of my high school mates because we figured out that the girls we were into tended to be into guys in bands (we sort of reverse engineered dating, I guess). I was always switching instruments so I learned how to play everything but nothing well. My dad listened to a lot of old country artists (Johnny Cash and June Carter, John Denver, and especially Dolly Parton) but he also really loved to listen to Enya and 80s pop music, so all that was kind of in the mixing bowl. My dad's a songwriter, too. I moved upstate for college and then lived in London for a while and in 2016 I moved to New York. The city feels like a big part of my identity now. I can make sense of myself there. So I reckon I'll stay here a long while.