Following Jonathan’s glowing review of his latest release, The Ghost of Sis Draper, the time feels right to revisit Shawn Camp’s eponymous debut recording 32 years ago.
If this 1993 album, however, doesn’t register with you, there is good reason. Released on Reprise Records, Shawn Camp did not move the needle one way or the other with regards to country music’s growth or popularity in the early nineties during one of its strongest creative years ever. Only two singles were released, “Fallin’ Never Felt So Good” and “Confessin’ My Love.” Both peaked at #39 on the Billboard country charts. Some label infighting would result in his sophomore, Emory Gordy Jr. produced album being mothballed, and his next album wouldn’t be released until 2001. And it would be self-released at that.
In the interim, however, he made his mark as a successful songwriter and an accomplished session player. Which is funny in a Shawn Camp-kind-of-way because Daniel Cooper wrote in a New Country review of Camp’s debut, “there’s nary a memorable line anywhere on the record.”
Camp recounts how he cultivated those unmemorable creative lines while at The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville.
“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. After that, we just kept going, non-stop, and wound up with about 40 of them.” Dean co-wrote two of the ten songs on Camp’s debut. Camp would go on to write many songs with other songwriters and many all by himself.
He would perhaps most famously pen “Two Pina Coladas” for Garth Brooks and “How Long Gone” for Brooks & Dunn. Gary Allan, Tracy Byrd, Josh Turner, Blake Shelton, Billy Currington, George Strait, and Loretta Lynn have recorded his songs. Camp wrote the title song for Willie Nelson’s 2023 Grammy award winning album A Beautiful Time.
Of his songwriting, the legendary Nashville personality and producer Jack Clement said, “”Shawn Camp has been one of my favorite musicians every since I first met him about fifteen years ago. I have always thought he should be a star. He’s got the talent, the voice and the looks to do it. And along the way he has blossomed into a class-A songwriter. Go, Shawn, go!”
If that’s not endorsement enough, Guy Clark once said, “Shawn Camp sings, plays and writes up there in the fine, rarified air where very few can breathe. It’s a joy to behold.”
With his eyes shut tight, and nerves of steel, Camp was a guy who did what he felt right out of the gates. He first came to Nashville in 1987 as a twenty year-old hoping to make it as a musician. He found work playing in the backing bands for Jerry Reed, Alan Jackson, Suzy Bogguss, Shelby Lynne, and Trisha Yearwood. His first gig was playing the fiddle for the Osborne Brothers. Camp was not some talent-less manufactured Music City product.
Sure, he was impishly cute, but the charm of his debut album lay in the subtle quirkiness of his perspective. His lyrics are never impenetrable. In fact, they tend towards the obvious in a casual and conversational kind of way. At their best, there is some inversion of expectations, offering a slow-hanging curve-ball of silly and witty word-play. Camp who, when given the opportunity to open for John Prine on a tour of the northwest said, “I was so nervous, because he’s got such a great audience, and such an intelligent one—I was thinking, ‘Man, am I smart enough to sing for these people?”
“Fallin’ Never Felt So Good” is a perfect example that he, indeed, was smart enough. Almost childish in its simplicity, the song becomes more joyous and infectious with each replay as the listener is pulled into the narrator’s fall into love. The dizzying and awkward video on CMT hooked me a listener as a nineteen year old who could fully relate to the clumsiness of love.
Camp mines the same enthusiastic vein with his second single, “Confessin’ My Love.” It is a charming song about a tongue tied- fellow finally speaking his mind about his heart. It is just a well constructed, concise, and super sweet song.
Camp is just as competent with more straight- forward, hard country lyrics. “Turn Loose of My Pride” is a gorgeous song. It is hard not to imagine a young Keith Gattis or on old George Jones having a field day with it, Camp comports himself surprisingly well with some gentle vocal dips and yelps, which is interesting because critics tended to focus on his unremarkable vocals.
Of his singing, Del McCoury said, “”I first knew Shawn as a fiddle player—and a good one, I might add. Since then I found he is a great songwriter. And when it comes to singing, he’s a stylist, and Buddy, I like your style.”
“One of Them Days” is a song about a man with a shot heart who can’t find respite from his work-a day life. Camp sings, “There ain’t no lovin’ when I get home late/A hard day of labor and my ol’ back aches/TV Dinner, channel eight/John Wayne just thought he had the longest day.”
“Speakin’ of the Angel” is a barroom weeper about a man who still bows before the name of his ex lover. I love the narrative detail that “She still makes all the dances in old man Walker’s barn.”
Mark Wight’s production, combined with wonderfully organic musicianship from the players, provides the album with a rootsy aesthetic that should have been more celebrated and championed in the moment.
This is another great album that didn’t stick its ’90’s landing in Nashville. Camp has since recorded several other excellent albums, but starting with his debut provides the perfect opportunity to meet this vocal stylist and special songwriter where he was when it all began for him.
I got to review this album back when it got re-released alongside the shelved 1994 album. I was surprised that New Country magazine panned it for lacking identity back when they reviewed it, because I found the album very charming and interesting despite a couple weak tracks.
I also found it interesting that both top-40 singles from it ended up getting covered by Mark Chesnutt. I always wanted Josh Turner to record “Confessin’ My Love” too, as I think he’d nail it.
I’m a big Shawn Camp fan! I love all of his albums and so many of the songs that he’s written that other artists have recorded, including one of Jonathan’s and my mutual not-so-secret pleasures, “Love Done Gone recorded by Billy Currington.
Not only is his songwriting so full of life, his vocals are always intriguing.
As for this album, I love the songs and the production. It’s funny that Mark Right is the one that tried to push Mark Chesnutt to go more pop, because the production for this album is pretty perfectly modern country and the production that he did for Chesnutt’s versions of Camp’s “Fallin’ Never Felt So Good” and “Confessin’ My Love” were pretty similarly produced. As for Chesnutt’s versions of the Camp songs, I like both of them a lot, but still think Camp’s versions are even better.