Nate Campany

Scratch and Riff

“My name is Nate, and you can consider me your neon green plastic hand-shaped backscratcher”.

Nate Campany will scratch your back if you scratch his. He may even scratch it with a used CD of the Backstreet Boys song he once penned.

Nate refers to himself as having a “normal life”. He “has a beard, credit cards, and a job”.  That job is creating pop records, for the likes of The Backstreet Boys as previously mentioned, and others such as The Click Five and platinum selling Dutch artist Ilse Delange. However, he also manages to carefully intertwine his pop sensibilities with deeper roots in the homespun, heartfelt emotive values of Americana. The Track ‘Shown’ is a clear standout on his MySpace page. A driving rural lament that simultaneously echoes the pioneering spirit of working on a chain gang in dust bowl USA whilst retaining enough pop melody to evoke a sense of real escapism. You can almost hear the US drama music supervisors clamouring to get to his door with a series of emotionally wrought visuals for him to serenade. Unrequited love in Lost, a sudden death in Grey’s Anatomy, in the right place a very powerful song.

So where does the neon green backscratcher come in? Well, in Nate’s words: “Have you ever been to one of those 99-cent stores, going up and down the aisles, not really needing anything but trying to find something to buy because it only costs 99 cents?” Nate wants you to spend that $0.99 on something he believes in – his music. He joins a growing trend among artists that are self-financing their work by utilising the devotion of a personalised fan base. He set up the website helpnate.com encouraging donations from friends, family, fans and strangers in order to help release his own material. The ‘Serenade’, is the name he gives the musicians he records with. He also includes the people who he believes have encouraged him through the site under this collaborative title.

The labour of love result, after being locked away with 12 musicians recoding live – without a trace of a pitch shifter or well vanished pop lacquer – is “The Estella sessions”. From this body of work comes the ‘The Only Bridge I Need’ EP which is due for release on 1st June 2009. A full album, ‘Estella’ will be released in late 2009.

Nate embarks on a solo acoustic tour of the UK throughout May supporting Kim Richey, Thomas Dybdahl and Great Lake Swimmers.

http://www.myspace.com/natecampany

http://www.helpnate.com/