The daughter of a Baptist preacher, Kate Campbell grew up in Sledge, Mississippi, listening to the harmonies of the choir and the stories in her dad’s sermons. Her music blends a variety of American styles—Gospel, soul, R&B, Celtic music—with a particular gift for storytelling. She was shaped by the civil rights movement, which she observed as a very young girl in the sixties.
Her music’s power comes from the way she unites tradition with individualism. She has tremendous personal skill as a narrative songwriter, but she’s also willing to claim her roots; her music draws equally on what belongs to a community and what belongs to her personally, on the traditions of the Baptist church in Mississippi—which she knows intimately—and on her private artistry as a storyteller. Maybe this is what she figured out by seeing the civil rights movement with a kid’s-eye view: the artist has to have some critical distance from the community, has to stand enough apart from it to see it clearly—but she also has to love the community, or she has no business singing about it. It’s evident in every note of Kate’s music that she loves her roots.
Some of Campbell’s work is featured in Image issue 36.
Visit Kate Campbell’s website here.
Biography
Since making her recording debut in 1994 with the heart-rending “Songs From The Levee,” singer/songwriter Kate Campbell has since put together a body of work matched only (perhaps) by Emmylou in consistency, Lucinda Williams in terms of pure, wrenching, honest self-examination and self-revelation, and no one for its sheer display of broad-based, intimate artfulness. While doing so, she has managed to include the likes of Guy Clark, Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller, and the heart of the Muscle Shoals classic soul and R&B hit-making machine as both admirers and collaborators in her distinctly literate musical vision.
Her endearing, clear-water vocal delivery, eloquent gift for storytelling (which has drawn repeated comparisons to such bastions of the Southern writing tradition as Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty and William Faulkner) and easy command of a full-range of American music styles, have combined to earn Campbell recognition as a formidable talent by critics, musicians and a discerning public. Kate’s sublime “Moonpie Dreams” (1997) and “Visions Of Plenty” (1998) each garnered “Folk Album Of The Year” nominations from the Nashville Music Awards (as well as enthusiastic airplay by Triple-A, folk and Americana stations). Later albums, “Rosaryville” (1999), “Wandering Strange” (2001), and “Monuments” (2003) extended the upward-bound arc. Her newest album, “Twang on a Wire” was released in September of 2003. She is currently on tour for the album.
Campbell has played—and wowed—the prestigious Cambridge Folk Festival, Merlefest, Philadelphia Folk Festival, and Port Fairy Folk Festival (Australia). She has been featured on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Live From Mountain Stage, and had her story (and haunting song “When Panthers Roamed In Arkansas”) included in the debut issue of The Oxford American ‘s ultra-hip Southern Music series. An interview with Kate (along with Mary Chapin-Carpenter, Shawn Colvin, Nanci Griffith, and others) also appeared in the fascinating book Solo: Women Singer-Songwriters In Their Own Words.
Current Projects
May 2004
For several years I’ve been thinkin’ about the “blues” after re-discovering the work of Zora Neale Hurston. Then last summer at the Glen Workshop I was introduced to the poetry of Denise Levertov and immediately responded to her “Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus.” The combination of these two are directly influencing the current direction of my songwriting. Now this spring I’ve been reading Paul Elie’s book, The Life You Save May Be Your Own and have been truly re-inspired by the journeys of Flannery O’Connor, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, and Walker Percy. I’m not sure how it will all mix together on my next recording project, but it is this part of the writing process, the “brewing” part that is my favorite, and truly sometimes hate to see it come to an end.
I recently signed with a with a new record label, Compadre Records. This February I recorded a CD that will be released by Compadre Records in August 2004. Compadre will also be re-releasing my first CD, “Songs From The Levee,” which was originally released in 1994, in August. I am touring this spring and summer and will be returning to the United Kingdom for a tour in May. In January of this year, I performed a concert at Vanderbilt University as a part of the Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Series.