The Chapmans have launched a new band website. It’s an interactive flash based site that is basically one page with popups for all additional info. It’s not a bad design, but it does use some bandwidth.

The photo gallery was pretty slow to load, and I’m on high-speed, but it was worth it to see papa Chapman in that ten-gallon hat!

The tour schedule feature is pretty cool, but I had to use Firefox to view it. It never would load in Safari. So be aware that your milage may vary depending on your preferred browser. It not only provides dates and locations, but also an animated tour map with a red line tracing their tour route. It’s vaguely reminiscent of the Indian Jones map, but without the plane.

The real unique feature though is Chap TV. If you click on the TV, the popup will load the Chap TV. Chap TV is…well, I’ll let them explain it.

It was an idea that was conceived on one of those really late overnight drives on tour, when Jason decided to pull out his new camcorder and start filming all the excitement. Being dark and all, he put the camera on night mode, and then the light bulb went off in the collective heads of The Chapmans‚Ķ if millions of people wanted to watch the home video’s of Paris Hilton, maybe they wanted to see some of The Chapmans too. So we started filming every exciting moment out on the road, back stage, riding in the ChapMobile‚Ñ¢, in the studio, broke down on the side of the highway. Then we got to thinking how difficult it was gonna be to get all our fans into our living room to watch the footage, and after a failed attempt to get permits to build a 10,000 sq. ft. addition to our house, we decided to build it in cyberspace. Enter Chap-TV.

I’m not sure but that the boys may have overestimated the size and interest of the audience just a bit, but it’s still fun stuff. You’ll also see an occasional appearance by other bluegrassers the Chapmans come into contact with. The single bass jam featuring Jason Chapman along with Justin Carbone and Alan Bartram, was inspiring.

Watch this introductory video. That last question really has me thinking. Check it out at Chap-TV.com.

In addition to completely overhauling the website, the guys have also been working diligently on a new CD. Jeremy commented on the mutual feelings they all share about this project.

It’s exciting to see just how much the band and sound have grown since the release of our last album, Simple Man. It’s motivating to know our fans, radio, media, and the promoters are anxious for new material from the Chapmans. We look forward to releasing what we feel is the finest music we’ve produced yet in our career.

This is a hard working bunch of guys and we sure appreciate their musical and comedic contributions to bluegrass.