Song Talk with Morry Campbell

Songs in the woods...and maybe bears too!

If you're up for a mini-Woodstock experience with a lot of talented indie-musicians in a pristine, beautiful setting, check out Out in the Woods, the first annual LGTB Music festival at Easton Mountain. (August 13 and 14th, Easton Mountain, near Greenwich, NY, events starting at noon on the 13th. Check the website for details). I'm going to be there, along with some of my best buds and fellow musicians: Dan Manjovi, Roger Kuhn, Terry Christopher, Norine Braun, John Small, and Susan Souza, to name a few. Should be a great event. Easton Mountain is one of the most beautiful places east of the Mississippi, and coming from a Montana boy who grew up in the Rockies, that's saying something. I hit the stage at 5:45 on Saturday.

If you want to contribute to a great cause, you can support the festival with a little cash infusion, and you get some cool prizes if you donate. More bootie the more you contribute. Check it out here. Hope to see you under the open skies in the mountains.

Have a Roger Kuhn Christmas!

Every year around Christmas time I find myself wondering what new Christmas music is going to come out so I don't have to listen to the same old songs over and over again. Luckily for you and me, my good friend Roger Kuhn has finished his own holiday CD, Every Year Around Xmas Time. Full disclosure, I recorded and/or produced or co-produced four of the 7 cuts on the CD. But setting that aside, Roger has written 7 original Christmas/Holiday songs, and every one of them is an enjoyable listen.

 Roger's take on the holidays is at once rooted deeply in tradition of what has come before him (Under the Mistletoe, Xmas Joys), while at the same time pushing the boundaries of what we expect to hear on a holiday album (December, Oh What a World).

My favorite cut on the CD changes as I listen, but my favorite cut right now is the deeply moving Oh What A World, which chronicles the story of a homeless gay boy beaten to death on Christmas Eve (sadly based on true events).

I'm singling out one song in a whole collection of terrific songs. You can download Roger's Holiday album through iTunes by clicking on this link.

Also contributing to the musical and production talent on the CD are James Erickson (December), Robert Urban (Every Year Around Xmas Time, Under the Mistletoe, Xmas Joys), and my good friend and masterful musician Dan Manjovi (I Heard There Was A Star).

Video: Good (Good video)?

And now, drum roll please:  rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrh!  Here's my very first posting to YouTube. This is an excerpt from Terry Christopher's now annual (for the last three years) United For the Ride Concert, benefitting the NYC LGBT Center's Braking the Cycle Event, the annual fund-raising bike ride from Boston to New York City. We raised a lot of cash that night, and it was a great concert, as I hope this little bootleg video testifies. Many thanks to Terry for filming the event, and for the magical, mystical Barry Childs for operating the camera for us. And it's still possible to donate to the cause. All proceeds go to HIV and AIDS services for the NYC LGBT Center. Click here to donate to this very worthy cause.

Get out of town! (gig in Poughkeepsie)

NOTE: First time, got the gig time wrong. It's corrected below. Festivities begin at 7:00PM, NOT 7:30 PM

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Hey, New Yorkers! Get out of town! Take a break from the hustle and bustle, and come  up and enjoy a relaxing couple of sets of songs with me in nearby beautiful Poughkeepsie!

Morry Campbell
Saturday, April 24, 2010
7:00-9:00PM
@Caffe Bocca
14 Mount Carmel Place
Poughkeepsie, NY  12601
(854) 483-7300

Going to be playing some old songs, and a lot of new ones, and some covers, including covers of songs by Fleetwood Mac, Annie Lennox, Neil Young, James Taylor, and maybe one or two old standards too. Yeah, the train ride is $28, but the coffee, tea and desserts at Caffe Bocca are some of the best upstate New York has to offer, and hey, everyone needs some time away from the Big City, no matter how much we all love it.

xo,
M

World AIDS Day Concert

Hey kids,

This past weekend, my good friend Terry Christopher and I went up to contribute our talents to Newburgh, NY's World AIDS day event, organized by Markus Payne. Terry videotaped the event, and here is his (our) rendition of the song, Wade in the Water. Hope you enjoy it.

xo,

M

Amy Rocks

From last night at the Bitter End. Amy was dazzling. Photo courtesy of Rock Star Diary.

California Blues

I was certain that the mean-spirited, anti-everything that's decent and fair Proposition 8 would be overturned by the California Supreme Court. It seems pretty open and shut to me. Here's a revision of the California constitution, passed by a (slim) majority of Californians, that limits the rights of what the CA Supreme court has already declared a "protected class" of citizens. Which is unquestionably wrong. If the majority had been able to vote on the rights of African Americans in the '60s the Civil Rights Movement would have come to a much different conclusion.

But, judging from the reporting from the proceedings of the hearing, it sounds as if the CA justices are afraid of "overturning the will of the people." Well, that sounds cowardly to me. And I hope they surprise everyone and overturn this hateful amendment.

Songtalk Podcast now available on iTunes

You can now listen to and subscribe to Songtalk Podcast from the iTunes Store (for free, of course). Follow this link to see the original posting on my interview with the brilliant Dan Manjovi. You can read more about Dan and follow links to his music and pertinent websites there.

Songtalk Podcast: Dan Manjovi, Part 1

Well, as promised, here's the first installment of Songtalk Podcast. To download the podcast, right click with your mouse (or control-click on a Mac) and select "download linked file" or similar command, here for the mp3 file.

I'm taking the maiden voyage with the incomparable Dan Manjovi. In this first installment, we talk about Dan's evolution as a songwriter from his first CD to the second, harmonic vocabulary, writing a lyric as opposed to writing a poem (a good poem is not necessarily a good lyric, and visa versa), and the blues. Look for part two, and possibly part three, of our conversation in the coming weeks. It seems we had a lot to talk about!

You can visit Dan on the web and/or listen to and buy his music at his website, at CDBaby (Woke Up This Morning here, and the self-titled Dan Manjovi here), and on his MySpace page. His music is also available on iTunes, Emusic, Rhapsody and Napster. You can read more about Dan below the fold.

Terry Radigan at Rockwood Music Hall

Went out into the snow storm Sunday night to see Ms. Terry Radigan perform at Rockwood Music Hall. (The link is to a review of Terry's CD because she doesn't have a web presence of her own just yet. "But soon," she promised last night).

Now, Terry Radigan is an accomplished singer, and a superlative guitar player. That's reason enough to love her. But I think the reason I enjoy going out to listen to her when she performs is that she has succeeded in crafting a sound for herself that is unique, and perhaps trend-setting. Maybe if we're lucky.

Terry performs with an old Gibson electric hollow body, and a small Vox amplifier. It provides rich warm tone, and the ever-present hum of feedback throughout the performance. It's very consciously present. I'm not sure quite why, but it lends an irresistible authenticity and immediacy to her performance. Maybe it's because it creates the impression that the music is bigger than it is.  Maybe it's because it gives it a sense of space and dimension. Maybe it's because it's so refreshingly different from the flat, scrubbed-clean sounds so seemingly popular in today's music. But whatever the reason, the result is captivating and invitingly absorbing.

I also don't know of many songwriters currently out gigging with an accordion player. The combination of electric guitar and accordion is ear-catching and unusual, especially with one as gifted as Josh Camp. If you get a chance to go out and see her, take it.