A country way of life, Episode 21 ( Nathan Chapman, Mickey Raphael, Bob McDill)
Author: Jonny Brick.
Producer: Nathan Chapman
When the obituary of Nathan Chapman is written, it is certain that he will be described as the man who helped Taylor Swift find her sound. Having produced her teenage demos, he is credited with playing a whole host of instruments on the country albums she made, including banjo, drums and mandolin.
Incredibly, Swift’s debut album was his first ever assignment, and since then he has worked with other acts connected to Big Machine including Laci Kaye Booth, Lady A and Tim McGraw. This means that Chapman has worked on a song named after a man whose music he has also produced!
A Nashvillian, he was recording music as a teenager before finding success behind the desk, although he co-wrote the Darius Rucker hit Homegrown Honey. Mickey Guyton, Michael Bublé and Tenille Arts have all employed Chapman, as has rising star Karley Scott Collins, whose song Hands on the Wheel was co-written and co-produced by Chapman.
Alongside Dann Huff, Chapman also produced If I Die Young for The Band Perry, and he helped finesse the sound of Keith Urban’s hits We Were Us and Break On Me.
Player: Mickey Raphael
Willie Nelson is still putting out records in his nineties, and one of the calling cards of his music is the harmonica playing of his good friend Mickey Raphael. Their first collaboration on record was Red Headed Stranger, and he features on the album The Border, released in 2024.
A fellow Texan, Raphael fell into the Dallas folk music scene and met Nelson at a jam session in 1973. He followed Nelson to Austin and transformed himself from a folk blues player into a country one, becoming as loyal a compadre as Willie’s guitar Trigger. ‘It’s all improv,’ he told one interviewer of how Nelson doesn’t even have a planned setlist. ‘We never rehearse…We have a lot of freedom to experiment.’
You can hear Raphael’s signature sound If you listen to any of Emmylou Harris’s records from the 1970s and 1980s. He also employed it on albums by Tanya Tucker, Rodney Crowell, Rosanne Cash, John Prine and Nanci Griffith, as well as rock albums by Elton John, Sheryl Crow, BB King and Ringo Starr. Raphael also toured with Chris Stapleton around the time of the Traveller album.
Songwriter: Bob McDill
Born in Beaumont, Texas and celebrating his 80th birthday in April 2024, Bob McDill was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2023, to whom he had donated over 200 legal pads full of notes. Their citation mentions both this ‘staggering donation’ and McDill’s ‘literary sensibility’ which made itself known in standards like Don’t Close Your Eyes, Gone Country and Amanda, which was a hit for both Don Williams and Waylon Jennings.
Initially a folk songwriter, McDill was inspired to write country music when he heard the ‘rage’ within the song A Good Year for the Roses. In 1977 Bobby Bare recorded an album’s worth of McDill copyrights, and then McDill wrote songs like Song of the South, a number one for Alabama, and Good Ole Boys Like Me, which Kenny Rogers passed on but which Don Williams took to number two.
All Episodes can be found here
For more country music evangelism, go to countrywol.com where you can read Monday essays, Friday reviews and Sunday Hymn Sheets. Follow Jonny’s Country Music Calendar at the Country Way of Life Facebook page (facebook.com/acountrywayoflife).