Fireball
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Culturecatch
The News & Observer
Nashville Scene
Country Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
AllMusic
Amazon.com
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The City Paper
Culture Catch
As you may or may not know, I've been a gigging/recording roots-rocker for about 10 years or so, so I don't cotton to weak-ass country or half-baked heartache story songs. Mr. Camp is a dude I'd share the stage with any day of the week: former backing musician (fiddle, guitar, mandolin) with Trisha Yearwood, Alan Jackson, and Shelby Lynne and then a session ace for Guy Clark, Nanci Griffith, and John Prine after getting dumped by Reprise in the mid '90s, he's also written songs for Kenny Chesney, Tracy Byrd, andRandy Travis. Fireball isn't a masterpiece - I'll reserve that for the masters (Waylon, Willie, Johnny, even Dwight) - but this is one of the best releases I've heard out of Nashville in quite some time. The guitars snarl and twang, the backbeat drops like it's hot, and his vocals sit out front and clearly defined. "Fireball" starts things off just right, scootin' 'cross the dance floor. "Hotwired," "Would You Go with Me," and "Drank" are three more outstanding retro-forward tracks from a disc that boasts not a clunker in the lot.
- Dusty Wright
The News & Observer
4 Stars
If you knew Shawn Camp solely from his failed attempt at a commercial country career in the 1990s, you might regard him as a minor talent who couldn't make it past the first cut on "Nashville Star."
You'd be dead wrong.
Camp has it all: a master's chops on mandolin, guitar and fiddle (which he's played for the Osborne Brothers, Alan Jackson and Trisha Yearwood); a strong, Arkansasbred vocal style; and a gift for imaginative songwriting (he has penned hits for Garth Brooks, Brooks and Dunn, Ralph Stanley, Randy Travis and others).
From the explosive opening of the title track, Fireball (Skeeterbit Records) lives up to its incendiary premise. Moving seamlessly between country, folk, rock and bluegrass, Camp cleverly fuses melody and lyric in ways that set toes tapping and bring smiles to the face.
He is equally charming at full throttle, as on "Tulsa Sounds Like Trouble to Me" and the eccentric "Hotwired," or when teasing or easing into romantic contentment.
Camp is skilled at old-school honky-tonk and the more familiar sounds of today's country. He nails the hard-driving bluegrass of "Would You Go With Me," a song also on the latest Josh Turner CD. Bluegrass fans will get a charge out of hearing the late Jimmy Martin's "dialogue" with his hunting dogs as a lead-in to the forlorn blues "Beagle Hound."
Fireball is the kind of smart, well-crafted music that can be heard by those who are willing to search beyond the boardrooms and bottom lines of Music Row.
Nashville Scene
Swingin' New album by sidebar/should-bestar Shawn Camp gets rhythm
Shawn Camp is one of those characters you often find in the shadows of Nashville. You know the type: the gifted songwriter or picker who's on the telephone short list of many a producer and artist, but who's more or less invisible to the general public. Camp excels in both roles—he's written with Guy Clark and Jim Lauderdale and he's picked with the Osborne Brothers and Cowboy Jack Clement—but he's thus far been unable to finesse the tricky transition from background whiz to self-supporting front man.
Camp's new album, Fireball, gives him his best opportunity ever for crossing that boundary. Released on his own indie label and firmly rooted in tradition, the album doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell with country radio. But the record is so catchy, so lively and so believable that it could catapult Camp toward a Mary Gauthier-like or Buddy Miller-like career—one where critical adulation leads to a loyal audience that assures gigs at the best listening room in every big city and a new album every two years. There are no guarantees—just being good is never enough—but the opening is there.
What makes Fireball better than Camp's three previous albums—and better than 90 percent of the country records released in this decade—is rhythm. To strengthen the pulse in a country song, Camp knows, it's not enough merely to make the drums louder, as so many Nashville producers believe. It's not enough merely to imitate '80s arena-rock. It requires tapping into the forgotten past of country dance music. It takes swing, and Fireball swings "like a pendulum do."
This is most obvious on the fiddle-driven Western swing number, "Tulsa Sounds Like Trouble to Me," which even includes a Bob Wills-like shout of "A-ha!" But a similar syncopation distinguishes Camp's country rock tracks from the uptempo radio hits they superficially resemble. Camp does more than merely bring the snare drum and lead guitar up in the mix; he creates a bait-and-switch tension between where we expect the beat to fall and where it actually does fall.
This tension fits Camp's lyrics perfectly. Most of the songs here are variations on the same theme: the singer knows he shouldn't keep loving the woman who has left him, who has taken over his whole life or who was never interested in the first place, but he can't help himself. Sometimes this is played for laughs ("Beagle Dog" begins with a field recording of Jimmy Martin arguing with his hunting dogs and ends with the singer discussing his love life with his own dog); sometimes for tragedy ("Love Crazy" describes a singer so rattled he can't tell good weather from bad); and sometimes for both ("Waitin' for the Day to Break" describes a suicide attempt so unlikely that it becomes ridiculous).
In all these songs, the singer's hormones are pushing on the gas pedal while his conscience keeps slamming on the brakes. The lyrics suggest this conflict, but it's the push-and-pull of Camp's syncopation that makes the conflict matter. The title song about a dangerously alluring woman, for example, twitches with the nervous energy of those '50s rockabilly tracks by Dorsey and Johnny Burnette (father and uncle of Billy, who contributes songwriting and guitar to the song). Billy Burnette also contributes to the lurching, should-stop-can't-stop drinking song, "Drank." Even the album's one true ballad, "Lovin' Ain't Leavin'," has a bluesy swing to it.
Camp has an odd track record of becoming a major presence on other people's records. He had three co-writes, for example, on Mark Chesnutt's 1991 album, Looking for a Feeling, three more on Brooks & Dunn's 2001 Steers & Stripes album, and two more on Ricky Skaggs' 2004 Brand New Strings album.
This year, Camp co-wrote four of the first five songs on Josh Turner's new album for MCA, Your Man. One of them, "Would You Go With Me," boasts the best lyrics on "Fireball," though Turner's bottomless baritone brings out the poetry in the song's series of romantic proposals better than Camp ever could. "Baby's Gone Home to Mama" crackles with J.J. Cale-like swamp funk and "Loretta Lynn's Lincoln" is a deliciously comic fantasy by a "would-be country-singing sensation [with] no visible means of transportation." Unfortunately, Turner's album suffers a precipitous decline after those first five songs.
Camp deserves Turner's level of success. He had a shot at it when Reprise released Shawn Camp in 1993 and two singles poked their noses into the country Top 40. But the label refused to release the 1994 follow-up because Camp refused to replace the fiddles with loud guitars.
It was a rare attack of conscience on Music Row, and it relegated Camp to the shadows, where he has worked ever since. There was a 2001 small-label studio album and a 2004 live bluegrass record on John Prine's Oh Boy Records, but Fireball represents Camp's best chance to climb back into the public's consciousness. These songs are as accessible, hook-laden and well played as anything on the radio, but they also boast an inner rhythmic drama that should appeal to the NPR/No Depression audience that might give Camp the solo career he deserves.
- Geoffrey Himes
Country Weekly
Arkansas native Shawn snuck into the Top 40 a couple of times in the early 1990s before turning to songwriting as his primary trade—he's the man behind hits like Garth Brooks' "Two Pina Coladas" and Brooks & Dunn's "How Long Gone." He had a hand in four songs on Josh Turner's new album, Your Man, and if you enjoy that album's economy and sense of history, you'll probably dig this. Only his third studio album in 13 years, Fireball suggests Shawn ought to consider stepping behind a microphone more often.
- Chris Neal
Entertainment Weekly
Shawn Camp is one of Music Row's hotter songsmiths (with four cuts on the new Josh Turner disc alone), plus an in-demand session player, with unassailable chops that run the rockabilly-to-bluegrass gamut. Put him down as a triple threat, since Fireball proves he's also a better record-maker than most of his employers. Fans of the rootsrockin' side of NRBQ or Nick Lowe (and maybe even the late Jimmy Martin, who makes a dog-shushing cameo) will quickly cotton to these fast and loose songs about similarly inclined women. Grade: B+
- Chris Willman
AllMusic
Shawn Camp has been kicking around Nashville for nearly two decades. He has played in the bands of some big stars (Trisha Yearwood, Alan Jackson, to name two) and co-wrote some hits for others (Garth Brooks' "Two Piña Coladas" and Brooks & Dunn's "How Long Gone"). His solo work hasn't attracted him much attention; however, Fireball should remedy this situation. The title track gets the disc off to a red-hot start. The twangy rockabilly gem recalls roots rocker Dave Edmunds' glory days back in the late '70s and early '80s. Camp peels off several more delightful uptempo tunes in quick succession: "Tulsa Sounds Like Trouble to Me" (which rivals "Tulsa Time" as the top country-rock tune about that Oklahoma town), the fiddleled "Love Crazy," and the Bakersfield-style honky tonker "The Way It Is." Even when he slows down the pace, the quality doesn't dissipate. "Fallin' for You" stands as a lovely ballad, while the soulful "Nothing to Do with You" glows warmly with Jim "Moose" Brown's B-3 organ work. Camp flashes his humorous side on ditties like "Hotwired" and "Beagle Hound," while showcasing his bluegrass chops on "Would You Go with Me." And on "Just as Dead Today," he combines these two elements into a darkly humorous tale. Camp loads this disc with all you could ask for in a country album. It even closes with the requisite drinking tune, the slightly tipsy "Drank." However, what impresses on Fireball is Camp's confident, assured performance -- as a singer, writer, and musician. It feels like a culmination of all his years working and toiling in Nashville. While this isn't an envelope-pushing effort, it does make for a wonderful listen. And that is all you can ask for in an album -- and more than you often get these days. A resounding success.
-Michael Berick
Amazon.com
Aside from his prodigious talents as a hot-picking multi-instrumentalist and affecting vocalist, Shawn Camp is the very model of the Americana artist: a musician who so subtly blends bluegrass, country, folk, blues, and new acoustic music that he is able to fit into--or transcend--any of those categories at will. And as a songwriter whose fans include bluegrass royalty Ralph Stanley and Del McCoury, with such mainstream artists as Garth Brooks, Brooks & Dunn, and Josh Turner taking his songs up the charts (Turner features this album's grassy "Would You Go With Me" on his sophomore CD) the Arkansas native crafts new tunes with roots that go so deep into the genre they might be mistaken for classics. Here, the title song, as well as "Love Crazy," "Fallin' for You," and "Nothin' to Do With You," explore the head-swirling pain and passion that come with emotional heart trouble, while "Drank" and "Just as Dead Today" turn on smart, backwoods humor. And there are surprises: "Waitin' for the Day to Break" recalls Johnny Cash in his American Recordings period. Alternately sweet ("Love Ain't Leavin'") and sardonic ("Hotwired"), this album reaffirms Camp's place as one of modern country's most authentic, if underrated, creative practitioners. --Alanna Nash
The Philadelphia Inquirer
In a career that has spanned bluegrass and mainstream country with a sparkling, Brad Paisley-like blend of smart songwriting and instrumental virtuosity, Shawn Camp has somehow never made it over the top himself. His main success has come as a writer of hits for Garth Brooks, Brooks & Dunn, and others.
Fireball is another hard-to-deny effort from the guitarist-fiddler with the creamy baritone. The title track gets things off to a fast start with twang-fueled country-rock, "Hotwired" adds a touch of rockabilly and "Beagle Hound" some blues, while "Drank" is rawboned honky-tonk. Many of the numbers have a tangy acoustic texture, with "Just as Dead Today" leaning about all the way to bluegrass.
The songs, from the serious to the clever and witty, display the engaging accessibility that has been Camp's hallmark, and you can imagine a number of them, such as "Love Ain't Leavin' " and "Nothin' to Do With You" climbing the charts.
- Nick Cristiano
The City Paper
Shawn Camp puts his foot in many camps on Fireball (Skeeterbit). The opening title tune has a rockabilly foundation, while he moves into rocking country territory on "Love Crazy," turns traditional honky-tonk on "The Way It Is" and then also moves into bluegrass and folk on other cuts like "Just As Dead Today," "Drank," "Love Ain't Leavin'" and "Would You Go With Me." Besides electric and acoustic guitar, Camp is a fine mandolin player as ell and even switches to fiddle on "Just As Dead Today" and takes a turn on bass and dobro on "Drank," while also mimicking horn sounds and whistling. He's a good singer as well, and this is a set that thoroughly highlights his various influences and instrumental skills.
- Ron Wynn