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Written by Kurt Brighton
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Thursday, 10 January 2008 |
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Artists generally aren’t known for their stability. And not just the psychological kind. One expects a certain amount of rootlessness, a disjointed kind of life for an artist, a person who is brave and weird enough to step outside the norm and attempt to construct something original.
For Matt Campbell, moving back to Fort Collins after a stint in Denver, and picking up the pieces after some traumatic personnel changes in his Bottom Line Band means it’s time to go all-in and focus on the difficult work of being a musician.
“It’s hard to get people to understand what it’s like to have a band,” Campbell said. “It’s not just writing a song — it’s getting everybody together to learn it and play it. Then it’s booking the shows. Then it’s recording it, which takes time and money. Then it’s getting it out to people. For me it’s been a huge learning process. I would love to say, ‘Hey, I’m just going to write songs all day.’ But I can’t do that.”
With the release of his twin EP set In the Town/The Other Side of Town, Campbell is ready to take his honest, working-man song style to the next level. And he has been fortunate in that he has a die-hard partner in Denver-based guitarist Mike Wolf, with whom he has played and collaborated for years. Add drummer Adam Federer and the recent addition of bassist Ben Prytherch of Motorhome, and Campbell would seem to have a line-up of musicians who are dedicated to doing what it takes.
“Ben went out to New York with us when we played some shows out there last year,” Campbell said. “He just said, ‘Sure! I’d love to go,’ and he paid his own way and everything, on a moment’s notice. When we went to record, I really liked what Ben had done for us, and I like to mix up the sound, so I asked him to do a couple of tracks.”
And even though Campbell’s name is on the band, he is quick to allay any notion that he is a Jeff Tweedy-type of bandleader — a haranguing control-freak.
“I’ll write the song, but the other instruments I’m bringing in, I have no idea how to play those,” Campbell said. “So there’s no way I could even say, ‘I want you to play this note here,’ because I don’t even know what note I’m playing. I’m not very good at communicating in technical terms in music. So there is a lot of collaboration going on.”
And with collaborators like the aforementioned Bottom-Line Band regulars, as well as Colorado A-listers like John Magnie of the Subdudes, Campbell’s songs have never sounded more full and rich. Coupled with the mostly acoustic trio of songs on The Other Side Of Town, the disc provides a nice overview of what Campbell does musically, both the acoustic twang of his laments and ballads, and his more sassy, bar-room side with a full band.
“Even in terms of content, the three songs that are acoustic (The Other Side Of Town) have a different message to them than the ones that are more kind of honky-tonkish, and glossy,” he said. “I don’t know that happened, but it just sort of turned out that way.”
Happy accidents or not, the bottom line is that there is also a lot of work that goes into making music — work that goes unseen and unappreciated by most. For Campbell, it may require a certain mental jiu-jitsu for people to take a second look at how they view music.
“Music has gotten to this point where it’s treated as a novelty,” he said. “I think most people would say music is important to them, but when you get down to it, and you say, ‘My disc is $20,’ they suddenly think that’s a lot of money. There are people who drop $20 a day on coffee. There are people who spend $20 a day on lunch. So, if you’re going to say that music is really important to our culture, and we respect music and the artists who make it… for me it’s not just about, ‘Hey, I’m a musician. Look at me.’ There’s all this other stuff you have to do to make it happen, and the reality is that it takes time and money to do this.
“This is my life,” he adds. “This is who I am.”
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