Jul. 14, 2010 - Issue #769: Musician’s Survival Guide
Prevue
Creative control
Singer-songwriter prizes artistic integrity
» Amy Campbell / Supplied
"Commercial radio is never going to get behind what I do," she says. And she's fine with it—Campbell pursues her art first and foremost as an end in itself. Though hardly a destitute bohemian, she places fidelity to her artistic vision above mass appeal. Her long-term goals tend more towards finding the funding for another record more than seeing her face on a billboard or a single atop the charts.
Not that she's an artistic hermit or anything. Campbell still wants to be heard (she's even got a realistic, mature attitude towards file sharing), but she's not willing to consciously alter her creative process in hope of finding a bigger audience.
"I can't un-ring the bell once I've been inspired. I can't un-have the idea," she says. When working out an idea, Campbell says she rarely thinks of audience reception.
"The process of creating work has never really been motivated or not motivated by how people are going to take it in. That's a terrible thing to say, because I do want people to be able to enjoy it," she says. But the driving force behind her music is "creating something that I think strives for excellence, strives for artistic cohesion, integrity, something that I am proud of.
"I just hope that some people will get it or will care. When you make something and you put it out there, they're almost two completely separate events."
Campbell still considers her audience, of course. Her acoustic guitar and poetic vocals evoke memories of classic folk singer-songwriters, ensuring anyone with an ear for melody and an open mind can enjoy her live show.
"I think there are people who just want to listen to a song and enjoy it on a musical level," she says. "I've always tried to walk a line of creating something that can be both particular and general. I want to give people more than one avenue into it. "
Campbell's music rewards sedulous listening with thematically tight, stimulating reflections on the nature of travel, homesickness, responsibility and history. Often she uses the personal pronoun when describing the feelings or experiences of a lyric character. She says she's OK with people conflating her with her creations.
"I know it's too fine a distinction to ask somebody to make to understand that this is a character, and some of the things that happen to the character are the same as me, and I'm saying 'I' and 'me,' but you should know that at home I'm a different person," she says.
"If their experience is heightened by attaching it to me as a person, they're welcome to. I wish that I could have that much control over how the audience is going to take in the work, but I never will. No artist ever does." V
sat, july 17 (8:30 pm)
amy campbell
glenora bistro, $10 vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
Privacy Policy:
Vue respects your privacy. We will not forward your personal information to any other organization except as required by law, and will use your e-mail address only to respond to your comments. We reserve the right to edit and remove comments for length, clarity and/or if they are illegal or inappropriate. Your email address is never shown to visitors to vueweekly.com. Read the whole policy at: http://vueweekly.com/privacy
Comments policy
Comments go online directly without first being seen or reviewed by editors at Vue. Don't personally attack people, don't be defamatory, don't be spam-atory, don't hawk your band, don't pretend to be someone else, be clear, be on topic, be nice. Read our extended comments policy here. »
We use Disqus for our comments system. What's that all about?
We found that managing the comment community at Vue was easier to do with a system like Disqus. If this isn't straightforward to you, get help here.