Shawn Camp is a multitasker in every sense of the word. Aside from the role he’s played with Jerry Douglas in the Earls Of Leicester, which can be traced back to its origins in 2013, he’s also a renowned solo artist in his own right. His songwriting credits extend to some of the biggest names in today’s country music — among them, Willie Nelson, Garth Brooks, Loretta Lynn, Brooks & Dunn, and Blake Shelton. Two of the tracks he penned for Nelson’s recent album A Beautiful Time — the title track — and the song, We’re Not Happy ‘Til You’’e Not Happy — helped win it a 2023 Grammy Award for Country Album of the Year.
He also writes for bluegrass artists, and has contributed such stellar songs as Sis Draper to Ricky Skaggs, and Durango to Darren Nicholson.
That said, Camp’s not without kudos of his own. He was named Songwriter of the Year by the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music, and in 2006, Billboard ranked him at number ten on their list of Hot Country Songwriters. In 2014, Camp won a Grammy Award for his production of Guy Clark’s album My Favorite Picture of You, a follow-up to his 2012 Grammy award he shared with Tamara Saviano forFolk Album of the Year,” given them for their production of This One’s for Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark. One of Clark’s principal sidemen along with Verlon Thompson, he and Thompson have frequently shared stages performing their live tribute to Clark since his passing in 2016.
Camp began his career working in the backing bands for such luminaries as the Osborne Brothers, Alan Jackson, Trisha Yearwood, and Suzy Bogguss, among others, but then branched out with a solo career in the early ’90s. Signed to Warner/Reprise Records, he released his initial self-titled album in 1993 and hit the country charts with that first endeavor. A follow-up album for the label was released belatedly in 2010, stalled due to creative differences the first time around. He’s had several efforts over the past 30 years or so, but it’s his writing credits for other artists that have helped bring him wider recognition. So too, the prominent part he plays as guitarist and lead singer for the Earls of Leicester, not to mention as an active session musician, ensure the fact that he’s rarely idle….if at all.
“It seems like there’s always something I’ve got to be doing,” Camp told us when Bluegrass Today caught up with him backstage at the recent Earl Scruggs Music Festival. True to form, it found him playing solo sets as well as taking part in the Earls of Leicester’s frequent performances over the course of the three day festival. “This year I’ve been gone seems like every week. I was just home for about 36 hours this week, and then I fly to Albuquerque and drive to Taos to play the Big Barn Dance festival next Thursday. Then I’ll drive back to Albuquerque on the next day and fly to Atlanta and play North Georgia somewhere.”
That schedule alone would exhaust most artists with no other responsibilities other than their own, but given the part he plays with the Earls, he admitted it can occasionally be a bit tricky. “It just fits together,” he maintains. “If I’m booked, we don’t do a band show. If I’ve got something else, it takes priority. It does for all of us. If anybody’s got something, we can’t do a show, but we do block out weekends like this one and make sure we’re not working. If there’s something that pops up, we may work, but it’s probably going to be less of the Earls stuff for the next couple of years. Things are probably going to be going in different directions.”
Although he mentioned that Douglas will be busy promoting his own upcoming album, Camp mentioned he’ll still have plenty to keep him occupied all on his own.
“I’ve just cut two new albums,” he noted. “One is the Sis Draper project, which I cowrote with Guy Clark, and it’s got a lot of songs about Sis, and just other things we wrote together. I’ve got another album that I just recorded and finished mixing this week, and it’s all inspired by Johnny Cash and Cowboy Jack Clement at this hour. It’s all kind of stripped down, kind of like the stuff Johnny recorded with the Tennessee Two, and it features Dennis Crouch on bass and Richard Bennett, the guy that played electric guitar with Mark Knopfler and Neil Diamond, as well as on my second album for Warner Brothers. I just fell in love with the way he played. He wrote a song, an instrumental, called Secrets of June the day after June Carter passed. I couldn’t stop listening to that song, so I told him, ‘Hey, if you ever want to put some lyrics to that Secrets of June song, I can’t hardly leave it alone. So I did that, and I knew that song had to be recorded with Richard. That was like the keystone to the whole project. I also used a song that Marshall Chapman wrote years ago, the day after Johnny Cash passed, called Railroad Track. I’ve got 14 songs on that album so far. It’s a tribute album in a way. It’s songs that he didn’t write, but they’re of his vein. I’m just trying to get it out of my system so I can move on down the line.”
That said, he insists that his commitment to bluegrass remains unabated, although he admitted he can’t account for its progression from its early origins to the populist appeal it garners nowadays.
“It’s nice to see some hippie dancers out there,” he mused. “Once in a while, we see these hippie dancers cutting loose out there. Plus, there’s all these young kids that are coming up in it. With every generation, the musicianship seems to get a little better, and they’re all great, these new kids. They didn’t learn to play the way we did. They had they had tools to learn, like YouTube videos that had people showing them exactly how to do things. We were having to pick up a needle on a turntable and back it up and try to get it close to the record, and it’s just not as efficient. These young kids learn a lot quicker. Every every generation is a smarter generation it seems.”
Nevertheless, Camp said that he does see some generational differences. “I don’t know that they’ve got any more soul in their music than we’ve got in ours,” he contended. “They may lack ever getting the chance to meet their heroes and our heroes, because many of them are gone. All the old first generation are gone, so I feel blessed that I got to meet most of mine.”
Camp recalled an opportunity he had to meet Earl Scruggs in particular. And although he says he learned more from his records than he did from him personally, he relates one particular encounter that offered him some special insight both personally and professionally.
“I met him a few times, but we weren’t big pals or anything,” he reflects. “The last time I saw him was when I walked into the Cracker Barrel out by Opryland. I saw Earl there sitting by himself at lunch time. I was by myself, and I just stopped and walked over and said, ‘Mr. Scruggs, how you doing? Shawn Camp here.’ ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’ He let me sit down with him while he was waiting on his food. We visited for a little while and then I let him eat in peace. I picked up his check and left. That’s the last time I saw him, but I’m glad that was our last moment together. It was really special.”
