Biography

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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 a multitude of singers, and a multi-instrumentalist who’s played with everyone from Alan Jackson to the Osborne Brothers, Camp’s music sprawls across the lines that divide mainstream country, Americana and bluegrass—and if his songs have been recorded by more popular artists, his own CDs make the compelling case that no one can do them better.

Sixteen years ago, the revered songwriter delivered an early masterwork. The Arkansas native had fortified his second Reprise album with wit (“Near Mrs.”) and wisdom (“The Grandpa That I Know”) far beyond his 28 years. Camp had some early success with his debut self-titled album the year before, which garnered attention with singles “Fallin’ Never Felt So Good,” and “Confessin’ My Love,” so it was expected that the second album might be the breakthrough.

One problem: “The label said it didn’t sound like the latest hit,” Camp says. “They wanted me to change everything. Told me to take all the fiddles and dobros off and put electric guitars on. I got crossways and never did it.”

Curtains closed. Camp forever locked away the album. Artistic integrity tossed the key.

Cue serendipity. Warner Music Nashville President/CEO John Esposito happens into an impromptu guitar pull with Camp at the 2009 Leadership Music opening retreat. Esposito is “mesmerized by Shawn’s singing and finger-picking.”

Esposito swiftly unfastened the label’s vaults. Brushed neglect off his kindred spirit’s 16-year-old dusty diamond. “This stuff is magic,” Esposito says of first hearing the album. “There’s this sly, underlying sexiness to Shawn’s songwriting that I dig. I was trained to sign people who are magnificent and then to allow them show their magnificence. It shouldn’t be about trying to change what they do.” Voila: Witness the rebirth of Shawn Camp’s lost album, now simply titled 1994.

“This is an unchanged snapshot of that moment 16 years ago,” Camp says. “At least it’s getting out there for the folks to hear. It’s kind of a shock, but I’m awfully thrilled.”

Listeners will be, too. As a younger songwriter, the now 44-year-old had already crafted songs with a jeweler’s eye and they shine on 1994. Camp’s trademark lyrical fluidity (“Little Bitty Crack in Her Heart”) and buoyant melodies (“Clear As a Bell”) dot the album’s vibrant bluegrass-infused landscape.

Camp’s impact on modern country music already has been significant. While 1994 (produced by Emory Gordy, Jr.) remained shelved and Camp left Reprise Records, his songs were snapped up by other artists and Camp grew into a top-tier songwriter behind No. 1 Billboard hits for Garth Brooks (“Two Pina Coladas”), George Strait (“River of Love”), Josh Turner (“Would You Go With Me”) and Brooks & Dunn (“How Long Gone”). His boundless skill earned good company: Today, Camp splits pages with Americana songwriting legends including Guy Clark (“Sis Draper,” “Magnolia Wind”) and Jim Lauderdale (“Forever Ain’t No Trouble Now”).

“I dragged around a guitar from the time I was five,” Camp says, but it was with the fiddle that he first walked through the door to a career in music. Born and raised in Arkansas, he grew up surrounded by music—everything from his mother’s Elvis and his father’s Merle Haggard records to picking parties at his home to the sounds of living legends and local heroes at the bluegrass festivals his family regularly visited. “That’s kind of where I learned to play, under the shade trees,” he notes, and before he had finished high school he was playing for country dances around his home and hitting festival stages around the Midwest as a member of bands with names like the Grand Prairie Boys and Freddie Sanders & Signal Mountain.

Spotted by the Grand Ole Opry’s Osborne Brothers at an Iowa festival when he was 20, Shawn moved to Nashville in 1987 to play fiddle with the legendary bluegrass act, and over the next few years, he lived the life of a sideman, touring for short runs and long stretches alike with country stars and newcomers ranging from the Burch Sisters to Jerry Reed, Alan Jackson, Suzy Bogguss and Trisha Yearwood.

Before long, he became a prolific songwriter, too—thanks to a fortuitous encounter at Nashville’s songwriting mecca, the Bluebird Café. “I’d always written little sketches of what I thought would be songs, but I’d never really thought enough of them to finish anything,” he recalls. “And then one night I was sitting at the bar at the Bluebird, and I got to talking with this guy, and kind of just said, ‘yeah, I’m a songwriter.’ It turned out to be Dean Miller, and before the night was through, we had written a song together—and after that, we just kept going, non-stop, and wound up with about 40 of them.”

Shawn got his first cut in 1991 with “Fallin’ Never Felt So Good,” and though he claims that he began singing simply in order to pitch his songs—“ I think it just evolved from having to perform them in order for somebody to hear them,” he says with a grin—he was signed to Reprise Records the following year, and released his self-titled major label debut in 1993. But mainstream success proved elusive, especially when work on his second album ground to a halt over creative differences the following year.

“Emory Gordy produced that album,” he says proudly. “And I had Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Quartet; Patty Loveless was singing a couple of songs; we had players like JamesBurton, Jerry Douglas and Bobby Hicks on it. Looking back on it today, every song on it might not play exactly the way I’d like it to, but mostly I was proud of and felt strongly about it. But the head of the label wanted me to take it all off and put electric guitars on it; he said it didn’t sound like the current John Michael Montgomery album. I told him I’d think about it, but I wound up calling him back and telling him that I couldn’t change anything—that he needed to give me a release date or a release from the record label.”

Undismayed, Camp remained in Nashville and plunged into a songwriting career supplemented by occasional forays as a sideman. His catalog grew steadily, and so did the list of his songs recorded by major country artists. Yet even as he was scoring hits with the mainstream, Shawn kept close to his roots, too, co-writing with friends like Guy Clark and another writer with a bluegrass background, Jim Lauderdale, and the commercial success of songs for mainstream country were matched by critical acclaim for the likes of “Forever Ain’t No Trouble Now,” which appeared on the 2002 Grammy-winning Lauderdale-Ralph Stanley collaboration, Lost In The Lonesome Pines.

After leaving Reprise, Camp released four independent, critically-acclaimed CDs: 2001’s Lucky Silver Dollar, Live At The Station Inn in 2004, Fireball in 2006 and The Bluegrass Elvises with Billy Burnette in 2007. Camp is also a member of The World Famous Headliners, a band he formed with fellow songwriters Al Anderson and Pat McLaughlin.

It is no stretch to say that Shawn Camp is respected by the best in Music City. “Shawn sings, plays and writes up there in the fine, rarified air where very few can breathe,” Guy Clark says. “It’s a joy to behold.” Echoes legendary producer and songwriter Cowboy Jack Clement: “I have always thought Shawn should be a star. He’s got the talent, the voice and the looks to do it.”

1994 is a history lesson. Camp’s A-list collaborators include bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe (“Worn Through Stone”), Jerry Douglas (“Little Bitty Crack in Her Heart”) and Patty Loveless (“In Harm’s Way”). The earliest Camp and Clark collaboration “Stop, Look And Listen (Cow Catcher Blues)” whistles and snaps with predictably vivid imagery as engines groan and steel rails “pop like a broken heart.” “Writing with Guy Clark is a lesson in honesty,” Camp says. “Every line cuts to the bone. He’s not afraid of truth. It’s a good lesson to soak up.”

Clearly, Camp has. Pay particular attention to “The Grandpa That I Know,” a strikingly raw and intimate portrait of his grandfather’s passing. “Brand-new shoes, they hurt my feet/This necktie is choking me,” the story begins. “Cutting ff my air supply/When I hang my head to cry.” Secure a chair and discover the rest yourself. 1994 is as timeless as Shawn Camp.