WATCH: The Chapin Sisters, “Bergen Street”

Artist: The Chapin Sisters
Hometown: Nyack, New York
Song: “Bergen Street”
Release Date: March 31, 2023
Label: Lake Bottom Records

In Their Words: “I always write songs about places I leave. When I left Brooklyn for the Hudson Valley, I sat down at the piano in our home studio and ‘Bergen Street’ came out. The first time I played it for my daughter, it made her cry and I couldn’t play it around her for a while. She said it was too sad.” — Lily Chapin

“It’s such a universal story — not just for our individual families — but for so many parents of young kids. We thought we’d be city people forever and would somehow make it work and raise our kids in a one-bedroom apartment, but eventually the call of the country grew too loud.” — Abigail Chapin

“Having the space to work in makes the recording process more fluid and less restricted by time. We work around our kids’ schedule and our work schedule running a shop in our hometown that is a family business. The new songs that we are working on reflect this and we are finding ourselves writing songs about family, our kids, and also the simplicity of country life: Bugs, dirt, and cooking.” — LC

“We have an album’s worth of songs in the works to follow up ‘Bergen Street.’ With four kids between us, including two babies, it means that our recording process is slow. We get in the studio when we can in-between nursing babies and playing cards with our big kids between takes. Sometimes we hold babies during vocal takes and sometimes the big kids sing backups.” — AC


The Chapin Sisters (L-R): Abigail Chapin, Lily Chapin. Photo credit: Mia Bieber

WATCH: The Chapin Sisters, “Lost”

Artist: The Chapin Sisters
Hometown: Brooklyn, New York (Abigail), and Hudson Valley, New York (Lily)
Song: “Lost”
Album: Ferry Boat
Label: Loantaka Records

In Their Words: “This song was written as a little finger-picking ditty on the guitar, but when Evan Taylor (producer/bandmate) heard it he visualized the string-like strains of the Mellotron lifting into the solo which creates a dreamlike ambiance. This song was written at the nadir of US political despair — post-election 2016 — right after Trump was elected when we were trying to navigate this fear and uncertainty. It is a meditation on remembering to stay in the now, choose hope over despair. For me regret can arise out of thin air. It can keep me up at night, chewing at my insides. The only way out of it is meditation, gratitude, hope. There is a children’s book* that says, ‘when you are lost it is the easiest place to be found.‘ And it’s true that often my songs come out of late night sleepless rambles. We need hope these days, and togetherness. This song is about that.” — Lily Chapin


Photo credit: Sita Marlier
Video directed by Alec Coiro
*children’s book is Emily Winfield Martin’s The Littlest Family’s Big Day