#293 CIRCLE OF TWO by Steve and Annie Chapman (1984)

CIRCLE OF TWO by Steve & Annie Chapman (1984)
Star Song Records – SSR 8055

Producer: Jonathan David Brown


File Under: CCM

Time Capsule-Worthy Track:

Circle of Two

Family.

It's the foundation for civilization. It's the single most important building block of society. It's where you probably experienced your greatest triumphs and deepest vulnerabilities. 

Family, hopefully, is where we learn the meaning of loyalty, cooperation, and trust. It is where we learn to love, and to bear one another’s burdens. It is the single most important influence in a child's life. 

In a perfect world, family provides us with security, identity and teaches us right from wrong. It provides us with experiences, traditions, and a sense of belonging. 

And it was the first and most important institution created and sanctioned by God Himself. Before government...even before the Church...there was the family.

Husband-wife team Steve and Annie Chapman have always understood the importance of family. They are authors, speakers and musicians who've always sought to strengthen and encourage marriages and families through their ministry. It has been the central theme of their life's work, the common thread that runs through whatever they put their hands to.

While the duo has continued to record and release new music throughout subsequent decades (much of it available on their website), the primary musical output of Steve and Annie Chapman came as a result of their relationship with Star Song Records in the 1980s, with 1984's Circle of Two being a high-water mark due to radio airplay, a memorable group of songs, a top-notch cast of studio musicians, and the superior production talents of the late Jonathan David Brown. But the Chapmans were creating what would later be called "contemporary Christian music" as early as the mid-1970s in a band called 
Dogwood.

During a recent conversation with Steve Chapman, I asked him to take us back to the beginning. 

"Well, I grew up in the home of a pastor in West Virginia and music was a big part of our family of four," he recalled. "We sang as a quartet with my mother providing accompaniment on guitar. When I was around 12 she decided to pass on the instrumental responsibility to me and taught me a few chords. Most of our songs were, as they’d say in the Pentecostal world, 'three chords and a shout.'"

Having grown up a Pentecostal preacher's kid myself, I can relate to Steve's experience. Southern Gospel was the musical genre of choice in my childhood home in Alabama, as it was for Steve in the riverside town of Point Pleasant, situated on the West Virginia-Ohio border.   

"My family was influenced mainly by folks like The Happy Goodman Family, The Singing Rambos and other similar groups," Steve remembers. "But I personally also enjoyed pop music at the time with a particular interest in artists like Glen Campbell, Marty Robbins, and Merle Haggard. My favorite type of song was, and still is, a story song…and it shows in my writing." 

When Steve was around 16 years of age he met guitarist Ron Elder at a "Gospel sing." 

"Ron played guitar and sang with his brothers and sisters as a group and we began a friendship that eventually led us to Nashville in 1974," Steve said. They formed a group called Dogwood (named after the legend of the dogwood tree and its cross-shaped spring blossom). Within months, Steve's wife Annie became a full-time member of the group.

I asked Steve how Dogwood came to the attention of a then-aspiring young producer in the fledgling CCM music scene.

"Well, we ended up being the house band for the Koinonia Coffeehouse, sort of a gathering place for Christians on Music Row," Steve explained. "The crowds grew larger week to week and the buzz eventually caught the attention of Chris Christian, and he offered us the opportunity to record some of our original songs."

One of those songs, Water Grave, would become one of the most popular and memorable songs on baptism ever written. Water Grave, written by Steve Chapman, would also be recorded by the Imperials, Servant, the Boone Girls, and many others. 

Annie Chapman decided to leave the trio in the latter part of 1977 to be a full-time mom. Two years later, with a wife and a toddler at home, Steve started reconsidering this "life on the road" thing. 

"Dogwood’s travels were taking me away from home for many days at a time," Steve lamented, "and consequently I felt like I was becoming a stranger to my son, not to mention the strain it put on my marriage to Annie. It was not an easy thing to do but I felt compelled to make an announcement to the guys that I would have to exit the group. I gave a six-month notice and did so with no idea what I would do after leaving."

"During the time between announcing my resignation and actually leaving, Dogwood still traveled and while on the road I started writing songs about the one thing I missed the most, my wife and child," Steve said, revealing that the Chapmans' famous focus came into being as a natural outgrowth of life experiences. "One by one, I began adding songs on the subjects of marriage and parenting," Steve said.  

So the Chapmans would be a duet and focus on marriage and family...it's settled, right? 

Wrong.

"I introduced Annie to the idea of the two of us working together with an emphasis on family life but she was so satisfied to be a stay-at-home mom that she firmly resisted the idea," Steve revealed. "I realized that it would not be wise to force her to embrace working together as a duet so I did the only thing I knew to do…I went quiet and gave the matter to the Lord in prayer." 

Early in 1980, Annie Chapman had a change of heart that changed the course of history for her family...and thousands of other families. Steve explains: "I was very delighted when she told me that she felt led of the Lord to 'take our home on the road.' In her words, 'Home is where we are, it's not necessarily in a house.' I didn’t actually realize it at the time but leaving it in the Lord’s hands and letting Him change her heart was the very best thing to do, and for a very good reason. By the time she agreed to travel with me we had added a second child, a daughter. Traveling with two little children in our un-air-conditioned van was, to say the least, a relentlessly grueling challenge. In those times when Annie was exhausted and her nerves were raw, she couldn’t blame me for coercing her to travel…she had to take it up with God!"

And thus it began...a family trying to build up other families using songs, stories, and Biblical insights. "On a commercial level, having the focus of our music on family matters made us strange birds in the Christian music world," Steve acknowledged. "However, while it was a negative to some of the gatekeepers in the music industry, to pastors whose goal was to strengthen the families in their congregations, we were a positive source of encouragement. The invitations to come to their churches began to pour in."

So, if the CCM "industry" was resistant to the theme of the Chapmans' ministry, how did they end up on a label like Star Song Records? "Star Song was a growing company based in Houston, Texas," Steve noted, "and the founders of the label, Darrell Harris and Wayne Donowho were familiar with Dogwood. When they heard that the group had disbanded and that Annie and I were working together, they contacted us. After a few meetings, they decided to add us to their roster of artists."

The Chapmans released a self-titled album in 1981 and Second Honeymoon in 1982, both produced by Brian Tankersly, and both leaning heavily on Steve and Annie's acoustic country sound. The family-oriented songs definitely found an audience among concert-goers and brought the Chapmans to the attention of James Dobson and Focus On the Family. But they weren't getting played a lot on the radio.

Steve explains: "Stylistically, the first two recordings were very acoustic based and featured our country music flavor. They represented who we were very well, but Christian radio, in general, was not highly accepting of our sound. For the sake of gaining wider appeal on the radio, the Star Song staff decided to 'slicken' our sound a bit." 

Enter Jonathan David Brown. 

Jonathan David Brown

"Working with Jonathan on Circle of Two was unforgettable," Steve said. "Star Song sent us to Los Angeles to record, and that alone was a culture shock to a couple of West Virginians!"

Jonathan David Brown recruited guitarist Hadley Hockensmith, percussionist Alex MacDougall, bassist John Patitucci, and pianist George "Smitty" Price for the project. John Schreiner played synthesizers, Steve Swinford provided additional acoustic guitar, and David Mansfield played guitars, mandolin and violin. Brown produced, engineered, and mixed the album. 

"The recording process involved a collection of highly skilled musicians that Jonathan had gathered," recalls Steve Chapman. "The combination of their professionalism and Jonathan's very creative mind was amazing to observe. Singing with the band in the vocal booth was intimidating…but we were put at ease by their smiles and how approving they were of the lyrics in our songs. The result was a recording that became our best seller as a duet."

Songs like Home Fires, Kiss of Hearts, Open Arms, David's Song, and State of the Union solidified what was now a tradition for the Chapmans - recording albums with a specific emphasis toward strengthening marriages and families. 

And this time, the record got played on the radio. 

"The title song, written by Mickey Cates, was a definite departure from our country style," Steve admits, "but we fully embraced the message about a couple’s need to pray together in a 'circle of two' and we were eager to use the song. It got a lot of radio airplay. Another cut that radio added was a song written by Tom Taylor and Brian Kunzelman called Goodnight Kiss. It’s a touching encouragement to parents to remember how quickly kids grow up. It became one of our most requested songs at our live events."

     
"Her Daddy’s Love was one of the songs on Circle of Two that was written by the two of us," Chapman recalls. "Our goal for the lyric was to help dads understand how important a father’s love is to a daughter. It was a favorite of Dr. James Dobson and he featured it on his radio show, Focus on the Family as well as the film series Turn Your Heart Toward Home. He also highlighted our song If You Leave a Hurt on a Focus On The Family broadcast. That one was a lyrical paraphrase of a passage in Malachi 2 that warns men that hurting a woman can hinder his prayers." 

The fact that their songs primarily address a single topic (family life) is unique among CCM artists...or any type of music, for that matter. On one hand, it could be perceived as limiting...then again, if you're going to explore a single topic, family life is one that is rich with endless lyric ideas. Having felt directed of the Lord to pursue this path, the Chapmans have enjoyed a rewarding and fruitful ministry. "We have never been deterred from lyrically focusing on family issues by things like commercialism, or the lack of it," Steve said. "We would see the tears on faces in audiences while we sang challenging songs like Daddy Please Find A Reason, Her Daddy’s Love, David’s Song, or Goodnight Kiss. The comments after concerts by the attendees and the letters from listeners to the recordings were filled with encouragement and thanks for being bold enough to address the various and important facets of family life and for 'packaging' such challenges in the palatable media of music."
       
I asked Steve if the Circle of Two album opened doors for them to minister in a greater capacity. "Commercially speaking, Circle of Two did indeed open some doors for us," he answered. "Perhaps the most effective way it helped was the acceptance the recording found on Christian radio. This was accomplished mainly by including songs by other songwriters whose writing styles were more 'mainstream.' We were well aware that our West Virginia, southern gospel/country roots were showing a bit on our first two projects and that our style didn’t blend with many of the stations with a more contemporary format. So it was a wise decision on Star Song’s part in terms of gaining more airtime and thus a greater live audience." 

Steve and Annie are still going strong, authoring books, leading marriage conferences, speaking at retreats, and singing their songs. And that's a good thing -- with rampant divorce and after a legal and cultural redefinition of the very concept of marriage, theirs is a message that is needed now more than ever before. 
     
"After all these years strengthening the family is still our mission through music," Steve Chapman says. 

Check out books, music, blog posts and more at steveandanniechapman.com.