Sixty years in, Tom Chapin still performs with the conviction that a well-made song, sung directly to the people in the room, can do what nothing else can. His latest album, Songs of Hope (2026), is built from exactly that faith, with tracks like “Woody Guthrie’s Dream” and “Follow the Light” carrying what Chapin calls “hopeful, positive, meaningful messages” in times that need them. On Sunday, October 4, he brings that set to Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, a listening room in the capital region that knows how to hold music like his.
About the Show
Chapin, the younger brother of the late Harry Chapin and a founding board member of WhyHunger since 1975, has maintained one of American folk’s more unusual double careers: a working singer-songwriter of genuine standing running alongside a body of children’s music that has earned three Grammy Awards. He first performed in Greenwich Village folk clubs in the early 1960s and has been at it ever since, hosting the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning ABC program Make A Wish in the years between, taking a lead role in Broadway’s Pump Boys and Dinettes, and navigating six decades of American life with a guitar and something to say about it. His live sets range broadly—story songs, ballads, comedic and political numbers, old-time folk classics, and selections from Harry Chapin’s repertoire, performed on guitar, banjo, and autoharp. During the Covid shutdowns, he and daughters Abigail and Lily (The Chapin Sisters) streamed 200 live concerts as “Mornings with Papa Tom,” which tells you something about what performing means to him. Songs of Hope, released this year, picks up that thread, drawing in part on Pete Seeger’s conviction, quoted in the album notes, that “the right song at the right moment could change history.”
Venue & Logistics
Caffe Lena holds 110, and an evening with Chapin in a room that size is the kind of show that doesn’t need to be any larger to matter. Close enough to see the work in a performer’s hands, quiet enough that a song can land without amplification covering for it. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.; the show runs from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Tickets
General admission is $48.80 (all fees included); members pay $45.55, and a child/student ticket is $24.40. The show also streams via Caffe Lena TV for $5, with the full amount going directly to the artists. Buy tickets