This crystal-clear Nashville-recorded session stands as the strongest-ever album of original work by Wisconsin’s Bill Camplin. The co-owner of Fort Atkinson’s Café Carpe possesses a high baritone of naked beauty, employing Dylanesque duskiness and deftly doled drama, often wrapped in rueful irony.
He testifies to human foibles and futility, as personal confession and for those underfoot, suffering exploitation. Therein lay his “understories,” insightful, humane, sometimes indignant.
“Old Man Sleep” requires little reflection, yet begs for it. Camplin sees a street-wandering soul, addressing the elder beyond earshot with extraordinary tenderness. Haunting falsetto phrases recall the great jazz singer Andy Bey. Camplin, a master of linguistic quirk, notes: “In the alley of existence, your slur lives on.”
“Rage Against the Night” is Understory’s masterpiece, high, street-corner poetry worthy of the best Dylan or Townes Van Zandt, whispering Lear-like existential pathos. Sostenuto cello and majestically descending guitar chords soon recall John Cale-Lou Reed scenarios. Camplin exhorts with a sort of Threepenny Opera passion. “Rage” summons hearts and minds with time-borne challenges and no easy answers, only faith in perseverance and will for justice.
