Molly Chapin’s Time in Italy Made Her a Better Musician

If you ignore certain political trends, Texas is a pretty cool place to live. We’ve got badass barbecue, killer Mexican food and a culture colorful enough to inspire classic television shows like King of the Hill.

There’s a lot to love, but sometimes there’s only so much to be gained from staying here. Sometimes you just gotta flee the country and go to Italy – at least that’s what Dallas musician Molly Chapin concluded.

Chapin was born in Houston and started playing piano at 4, when her grandma signed her up for lessons. But her most influential teacher was back at home.

“After piano, I played drums because my dad taught me,” she says. “He was the type of person who was like, ‘I want to learn an instrument, so I’m just gonna learn it,’ and I thought everybody was like that. So, I grew up with this mentality of ‘If you want to do it, do it,’ because that’s what my dad did.”

Adopting her father’s mentality led Chapin to pick up more instruments, including guitar and ukelele, and pushed her to place herself in uncomfortable situations where she could grow as an artist.

“In college, I started doing spoken word,” she says. “I could play any instrument on stage, no problem, but using my voice terrified me, which is exactly why I did it.”

It was also this Just Do It (®) attitude that led Chapin to leave Texas for the old-world charm of Italy, where she found herself longing to make music.

“I studied abroad there in college in 2019 for three months, and I never felt homesick,” Chapin says. “Originally, I went over there to study graphic design and traditional art. I brought a ukelele with me and I found myself itching to play it every day. We lived in this hotel and this man who didn’t speak any English would come down every night to chain smoke cigarettes and listen to me play ukelele.

“It was my audience of one,” Chapin recalls fondly. “We never spoke the same language, but for three months we just sat with each other for hours. That’s another aspect of learning how much you don’t really need words in order for people to feel your music.”

Her brief time playing music in Italy and her discovered passion for performing poetry coincided, and thanks to a push from a friend, Chapin started recording her songs.

“One day I thought, ‘I could probably put some chords on this from the ukelele,'” she says. “They were songs that I never planned on recording or publishing, but one person told me, ‘No, you can do this,’ so then I did. Then, I started figuring out how to record, just for fun, and picked up guitar while I was in Italy. Now, that’s kind of my main instrument.”

Chapin enjoyed her time in Italy so much that she moved back after the pandemic blew over to further indulge in the culture.

“There was a big part of me wishing and pining to live there,” she says. “Again, it just took one person to tell me, ‘You can,’ and then I was like, alright, I’m going to do it. Originally, I was supposed to be there for six months. Then I stayed another six months, then another year. I feel like I did everything I needed to do.”

Chapin’s biggest challenge was learning the language, but once she got that down, it was smooth sailing. Guitar in hand, she submerged herself in the local scene and had become a changed musician by the time she resurfaced.

“I met some of the most amazing, studied jazz artists in Florence,” Chapin says. “People really did play for the sake of playing. There was no goal, no tier to reach. Nobody got paid for it, you just did it for the sake of doing it. I feel like that’s what allowed them to take me under their wing and teach me. I was in a couple of bands over there eventually, and if we did get gigs we got paid in wine.”

The two-year trip was eye-opening for Chapin, but her biggest takeaway was realizing the importance of collaboration. Before, she’d taken pride in doing everything by herself and being a “solo artist,” but performing alongside great musicians in Florence helped Chapin grow to appreciate working with others.

“Everything became so much easier when I dropped the ego,” she says with a sigh. “It all got better when I stopped wanting to have just my name on it. Why would I rob myself of someone else’s ideas like that? The best songs I’ve recorded have happened through bringing in other artists.”

Chapin’s latest album, Day Moon, was recorded entirely in Italy with musicians she met there. Through working with multiple artists, she ended up with a body of work that wouldn’t have been half as creative or sonically diverse otherwise.

“That album was mostly about letting other musicians be free to do what they feel,” Chapin says. “And again, these are incredible musicians, so I was like, ‘Have at it, do what you want.’ There was no ego. Here, if you’re a solo artist, people just want to be solo, and they get kind of stingy when you ask for a collaboration. There, I could say, ‘Here’s your track. Stay in these lines, but do whatever you want,’ and they would do crazy things. Things I could never come up with.”

“I think that’s one thing that made it so cohesive,” she continues. “Working with musicians that have an ear for it. The album before that, most of that was completely electronic and all on my own.”

Chapin sounds great over the blend of guitars on Day Moon‘s title track. The song begins as a laid-back acoustic jam but picks up steam halfway through and becomes something to bounce to. Her sweet, velvety delivery on “Come Back” contrasts with the song’s message of struggling to get over someone who was no good in the first place.

“Please don’t come crying back, I see right through your front / Temper like some tempered glass, shattered like a windowpane / Shit flying everywhere / I’ve still got the cuts on my feet, but you’ll never see them,” she sings before acknowledging her lingering pain. “How come when I see you it’s like not a second’s passed since when I waited for you every weekend?”

La Musicista

“All Three” sits back in the pocket with an infectious groove and vocals that Portishead’s Beth Gibbons would nod along to. The song is named after a trio Chapin was in called Tutt’e Tre, (which means “all three” in English) because they spoke three languages collectively and were from three different countries.

“You and I are like pedals on tulips / Destined to expire back to dust,” she sings somberly on “Halo Effect.”

“”Halo Effect” is about saying goodbye,” Chapin says. “I wrote it right at the end of my time in Italy. It’s as beautiful as it is heartbreaking having to leave a space that you love or that has served you so much. It’s a blessing to miss people and have people miss you.”

Chapin moved to Dallas after three years in Italy and has been here for almost a year, continuing to work on her music and developing her live show. Up to now, she mainly performed her material as a solo act, but recently she’s gotten a band together to fully flesh out her compositions.

“Sunday was the first time I played with a full band, and it was very cool,” Chapin says. “I had never heard my own music to its fullest, which is very exciting. I could sit on any of those instruments and be happy, but to be able to have it be my music and hear it live is so cool.”

With this experience fresh in her mind, Chapin plans to keep the band around for future gigs.

“What I write is for a full band, so hopefully all of the upcoming gigs I’ll have a full band,” she says. “It’s a fine line because small venues don’t want a drum set, or big venues need a full band.”

Chapin is also working on an EP that’ll come out next year. She has self-produced all her music thus far, but she’d be happy to have that change for this next release.

“I would love to not produce my next one,” Chapin says bluntly. “That’s another aspect of collaboration that I want to have. I would love to leave that to someone else. I’m glad I learned how to do it and I know what everything means.”

Until the EP comes out, Chapin can usually be found on a stage somewhere in Dallas. She recently played a few shows for Sofar Sounds and performed at the Deep Ellum Block Party on Nov. 23. She has an upcoming show at a community market at the House of Honor on Dec. 14.

One of the songs on the upcoming project, “Demise,” is a bluesy tune inspired by fellow North Texas artist Charley Crockett.

“It’s actually something I’d never tried before,” Chapin says with a smile. “So, Crockett’s song ‘July Jackson’ follows the tradition of old country-Western ballads. They’re beautiful waltzes or ballads, but they’re about infidelity or murder, crazy things, but it sounds so beautiful. So, I thought, ‘Let me try my hand at that,’ so I made up a story about a woman who is contemplating murdering her husband. Usually, songs are very personal and applicable to my own life, so I tried not to do that for once.”