Album Notes

Reviewer Kevin Lynch of the The Capital Times/Wisconsin State Journal wrote of this CD:

"By the time Camplin sang 'I've Seen Trouble,' I could feel my heart aching right through my shirt. You pay a small price to hear this man's voice.

I once characterized it as the voice of a fallen angel. After hearing Camplin's long-awaited CD of 12 originals, I know more of what I meant.

His voice is a glimpse of a private, forlorn hell. But Camplin's shining baritone keeps his spirit more sweet than bitter.

He knows that these qualities can get stuck in neutral, so he invariably drives the music forward with his own rhythm guitar and the crackling jump starts of lead guitarist Jason ``Doet'' Klagstad, a contrapuntal momentum that sustains you through the album's predominant quietude (also featured are bassist Steve Kleiber and string player Randy Sabien).

That energy also helps boost Camplin's lyrics, which often flash pure poetry: "You are a danger disguised as a breath of spring/ And after all we're bound to fall and doing it with no shame."

Camplin carries the weight of too many losses, a bit like this past year's Green Bay Packers. But he's a wandering spirit, beholden to nobody's rules. And yet he sings in one song, 'I Still Need Someone'.

The songs rummage through the human condition, turning up archetypes like 'Old Man', or loved ones like 'The Daughter', with lyrics like "raised on whiskey and flowers, born with hope and with shame, conceived by chance and deception".

There are still traces of Bob Dylan -- and even Lou Reed -- in Camplin's tender toughness. Check out the brilliantly rolling cadences of 'Long and Desperate Day'.

It's also gratifying to hear him "speaking to your shadow" on 'January Guitar', reprised from his very first album, 'January', from 1971.

Sit back with a glass of wine on a wintry night with someone close and slowly drink in this music."



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BIO

Born after doctor recommends that Clara have another baby to give her something to do...
This after already having given birth to 5 children...
Feels so good she has another.
(#6)Hears Ave Maria in the cradle...produces predilection for weepy ballads.
Lives normal childhood on a dead end street...on lake...next to railroad tracks.
Stays outdoors nearly all day in the summers...
Hears "It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To..."
Develops standards with regards to weepy ballads.
Time goes by...
A Teacher discovers him...
He serves his detentions...
Encounters another teacher who invites him to sing.
Goes to fields and factories in no particular order...
Dreams the unoriginal dreams of the young...
And is tempted by music.
Gives in.
Begins writing songs in vain attempt to gain control of content...
Has fun in spite of self...receives some recognition...
And has to write his first bio.

Decades pass.

Still following the muse...but not much temptation to speak about...
Still abusing four syllable words...like oligarchy...like epiphany...
Living normal adulthood.
A nuclear family...two autos...but no partridge.
Singing late at night in the café...
Buffing and polishing in a haphazard way...
The detritus of an unseen boulder.
Meeting more people than there are separate names for.
Hearing so many voices...hearing so many voicings...when overwhelmed...
Keep singing.
Live and learn...oh that's not original?
Speaking of which...
A bio is a collection of lies...
I wish them to be somebody else's.

[Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.
-Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)]