Following the meteoric rise in popularity of country music in the late eighties, there was an unrealistic belief that the well of young new talent was bottomless for Nashville to draw from heading into the new decade. As a teenage fan at the time, I remember being almost delirious with discovery at this abundance. I was not only waiting on the next big thing, but expecting it. I felt personally entitled to another star and breakthrough artist every month. Too much was not enough. Over and over again, the second coming of country music felt imminent.
The ability to seemingly unearth insanely talented musicians, songwriters and vocalists at every turn was real. In the moment of that fevered sense of possibility, the assumptions and anticipation of what new artists could accomplish in terms of sales, popularity, and artistic achievement became perverted.
My great optimistic overreach centered on Stacy Dean Campbell’s 1992 Columbia debut Lonesome Wins Again. After falling insanely in love with the video of “Rosalee” which was in heavy rotation on CMT while I was a senior in high school, I purchased the album. I was so convinced of its excellence that I brazenly told my high school girlfriend’s mom that he was going to be the next Garth Brooks.
Troyal Brooks hadn’t even fully become Garth at the time of my outlandish prediction.
Fittingly, Campbell wouldn’t even crack the Top 40 with any of his three singles from his excellent first album.
My mania for more was more to blame for any disappointments with this tender debut than any shortcoming of such a pretty and pure collection of songs as Lonesome Wins Again.
Produced by Brent Maher, Lonesome Wins Again has an airy acoustic country sound reminiscent of what Maher achieved with The Judds when he discovered them.
The promotional puff-piece in the album liner notes was written by Holly Gleason. She wrote, “Lonesome Wins Again merges old-time quartet singing with modern -day minimalism, to-the-bone emotion with the resilience of youth and grounds the whole thing in basic country traditions.”
Campbell channels a more tender and thoughtful rockabilly image and sound than that of, say, Mark Collie from two years earlier. Campbell’s vocals are delicate and gentle where Collie’s are rough and loose. Campbell’s strengths are sensitive ballads. In an AllMusic Review of the album, Brian Mansfield described this album as “Sexy, low-key rockabilly (like Chris Isaak but not as spooky).” At first glance, Campbell looks like a character from Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 film The Outsiders, but upon closer inspection he is almost too clean-cut and polite to be considered a greaser. He is far more Pony Boy than Dally.
All this is not to say that Campbell is posturing or playing at being something he is not. He represents what was unique about many of the nineties artists in Nashville. He expands a genre trope and takes it in unexpectedly contemporary directions. Nonetheless, he still wears his musical influences on his sleeves. It is clear Roy Orbison, Marty Robbins, and the Everly Brothers matter to him. Although he couldn’t escape the fact that he looked like a Sun-era Johnny Cash, he was brave enough to tip his hat to artists other than George Jones and Merle Haggard.
Perhaps the best indication of his loyalty to his idols is his version of “A Thousand Times.” The character in the song resolutely avoids the repeated opportunity and temptation to cheat on his one true love. As for comparables, Dwight Yoakam’ “I Don’t Need it Done”, Gary Morris’ “ Leave Me Lonely,” and David Houston’s “Almost Persuaded” come to mind. The song was co-written by Billy Cowsill of the Blue Shadow, a Canadian alt-country band founded in Vancouver that recorded between 1992 and 1996. The Blue Shadows were similarly steeped in harmony singing and fifties rockabilly and country music. It’s a great song and perhaps the highlight of the album.
Born in Carlsbad, New Mexico, there is more than a whisper of the old west to his sound. You can most hear it in the echoes and space reverberating throughout “Would You Run,” a song about hope, doubt, and vulnerability. It is a gorgeous song that Campbell co-wrote with Judson Spence.
Songwriting is how Campbell got his start in Nashville. He was signed to Tree Music in 1990 shortly after coming to town. He has a hand in writing four of the ten songs on the album. Don Schiltz contributes three co-writes while Jaime O ‘Hara offers two solo numbers.
The repetition of the lyrics in O’Hara’s “Baby Don’t You Know” roll wave-like over a man who is drowning beneath his ex-lovers cruel indifference as she is out on the town. The song is as rollicking as it is ruthless.
Campbell’s own song, “Poor Man’s Rose” is disarmingly spare and honest. The beautiful metaphor is rooted in the financial hard ground of the working-class. This is the other candidate for best song on the album.
“That Ain’t No Mountain” is a breezy song of confidence. The narrator is examining the mountains said to stand between the love wants and his partner needs. After some thought, I love the casualness of the observation, “That ain’t no mountain/It’s just a hill.”
It is wild that neither “Rosalee,” “Baby Don’t You Know,” and “Poor Man’s Rose” could respectively climb no higher than #54, #65, and #55 on the Billboard country charts.
Campbell would record Hurt City in 1995, a wonderful album more steeped in countrypolitan elegance and sheen than his more traditional-sounding debut, but it is every bit as good, His third album is 1999’s Ashes of Old Love. It is excellent in its own right as well, as Campbell returns to covering his own songs as a mature and fully realized singer-songwriter. His final album was recorded in 2013 and was titled Bronco Roads: Life in the West.
Sadly, none of those worthy albums got any traction at country radio.
Despite his lagging recording career, Campbell would continue to write with the likes of Dean Miller (Roger’s son), Kevin Welch, Jamie O’ Hara, and Chris Knight.
He would later pivot to writing novels and working in television, hosting the syndicated American travel series Bronco Roads.
Perhaps Lonesome Wins Again was too subtle and quiet to have sizzled and burned up the charts alongside Nashville biggest stars in the early ’90s, but its plaintive yearning and earnest sincerity still sound completely charming today.
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