PureVolume

Some careers can be described with a couple of words, but Shawn Camp's isn't one of them. A bold and distinctive singer, a songwriter who's provided material for artists ranging from Ralph Stanley, Del McCoury and Ricky Skaggs to Garth Brooks and Brooks & Dunn, and a multi-instrumentalist who's played with everyone from Yonder Mountain String Band and Alan Jackson to the Osborne Brothers and John Prine—Camp's music sprawls across the lines that divide country, Americana, bluegrass and roots rock. Although his songs have been recorded by more popular artists, Camp's energetic new CD, Fireball, makes a compelling case that no one can do them better. From the hard-charging, country-rockin' energy of the opening title track to the cheerfully mordant humor of the closing "Drank," it's a collection that showcases the thoroughly modern yet deeply rooted creations of one of Nashville's most unique talents.

Still, by the end of the 90s, Camp grew intent on recording his songs in his own voice, and in 2001 he released Lucky Silver Dollar on his own Skeeterbit Records label. Combining his own versions of songs like "How Long Gone" and "Can't Have One Without The Other" (previously recorded by Tracy Byrd) with new material like "Tune Of The Twenty Dollar Bill," the Mark Miller-Allen Reynolds produced album earned rave reviews. Yet despite the enthusiastic reception it got from those who found it, Lucky Silver Dollar was stymied by a lack of exposure—"I had no airplay, and I had no booking agent, so I had no shows," Camp recalls. He continued to focus on songwriting until early 2003, when a spur-of-the-moment decision to record a couple of bluegrass shows at a favorite hang-out resulted in Live At The Station Inn, released the following year on John Prine's Oh Boy Records.

Now, with the release of Fireball, Shawn Camp stands on the brink of still another phase of his career. Loaded with a fresh batch of songs the album reveals his strengths as a rootsy yet modern country stylist—and, as always, a songwriter who memorably connects contemporary sensibilities to forms that evoke memories of classics that traverse the range of country music history. Witty, sardonic stories like "Hotwired" and "Just As Dead Today" are interspersed with rockabilly-flavored blues like "Waitin' For The Day To Break" and "Beagle Hound," the smooth-flowing, grassy "Would You Go With Me," the glistening ballad "Love Ain't Leavin'," the easy groove of "Nothin' To Do With You" and even more.
The result of an organic process that found him "recording every song I wrote in the last year or so as if it were a master session," Fireball has a kind of seamless elegance that makes it a fitting capstone to a year that Camp counts among the best he's had. "All my life I'd wanted to record a bluegrass record, so to get any kind of approval at all out of doing that has been a real honor. This last year has felt a lot different to me—getting to play some of those places again, and seeing some of the same people. Those bluegrass festival folks are strong, you know? So it's been an amazing year—it's been a treat. And now it's on to the next thing."