Andrea von Kampen Interview

I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me.

That was wonderful.

Yes, it is very different. One thing I'll say is that the weather is incredibly extreme. Whenever I travel to the UK, I'm always shocked at how cold and rainy it is. You can go in July and it will be cold and rainy, with people wearing puffer jackets.

In Nebraska, the winters are very cold. We're talking about zero degrees, sometimes with wind chills of minus 20, and today it's 97 degrees.

This is something I always tell people, and they're always so shocked by it. I live in a very agricultural place. We're sort of the breadbasket of America. Even though my city has 300,000 people, and I'm near Omaha, which has a million people, in between all of our cities there are just fields of corn.

Because corn is a tropical plant, when July arrives our weather is similar to the tropics because the corn releases so much humidity. It's sometimes called “corn sweat”. Our summers are similar to a tropical environment, while our winters are brittle, bone-dry and cold, with the wind whipping. Our extremes are very different from the weather in the British Isles.

I'd also say that our state is roughly the size of your country, so we're very spread out. Even though I live in an urban area, we have a lot of land and space, and we have to drive everywhere because it's so spread out.

Geographically, it's very different, and our history is rooted in very different things too. We don't have 2,000 years of Romans, and history, architecture and culture. Our culture is very different, and it started with the Indigenous people here in Nebraska. “Nebraska” is an Indigenous word that means “flat water”, because our state used to be completely covered by one big lake.

We have a very different history too. You really couldn't find two places that are so different. The fact that we both speak the same language is crazy.

I think so. It's almost more that people tell me, “Oh my gosh, this record reminded me so much of the Midwest, or of driving through the fields.” I don't necessarily write based on that, but I think it's inevitable that it seeps in.

It's very strange to think about the things I was writing 11 years ago. I never listen to them, and I never think about them. They were very much a reflection of my life at that time. I'm older now, I've grown up, and I experience different things.

The advice I'd give is: don't wait until you feel that something is perfect or until you feel ready. You have no idea how things are going to resonate with people. Something you write when you're very young might be exactly what someone else needs at that time.

When I was in college and writing those songs, I had a songwriting lesson with somebody who was a hero of mine. He was travelling through Lincoln, and I said, “I'll sell your merchandise if you give me a 30-minute songwriting lesson.” I played him Desdemona and a couple of other songs.

He said, “Your voice is great, and what you're doing is great, but here's what I would do: don't write another song for 10 years. Just live your life. Wait until you're 30 to start writing songs.”

Deep down, I knew that was horrible advice. Why wouldn't young women want to hear what young women have to say? We don't all want to hear only what 45-year-old white men have to say.

I'd tell anyone: just make art now. Do what you can to put art out now, and don't worry too much about the audience that's going to hear it. Trust that people will be moved by it if they're the right kind of people for your music.

Music is never really finished, and it's never perfect. I still go back and hear things and think, “Oh man, I should have done something different on that verse.” But it's never really finished. Just write what you think is meaningful, release it, and don't worry too much about the rest.

I love that. I'm also very inspired by the moon and by circular shapes. I think there's such an elegance to them.

The catalyst for my record Sister Moon came when I was at the Newport Folk Festival. I remember talking to a local woman who told me it was hotter than ever—the driest and hottest summer she'd ever experienced.

I travel through North America a lot, and I can see the changes that climate change has brought over the last 10 years, including how many lakes are drying up. I thought, “I really want to write a record that talks about climate change, but I want to do it in an artistic way that doesn't feel too literal.”

At the same time, I was reading something about St. Francis of Assisi—“Brother Sun, Sister Moon”—and I thought, “Sister Moon. That's so beautiful.” I started thinking about the moon and how its tides affect our weather systems. I was trying to find elegant ways to discuss the climate issue, and that's how the idea came together.

I write all the songs and put them in order. Then we go through everything with a fine-tooth comb, and we usually have six or seven possible album titles.

I definitely wrote the song first. It was then on the shortlist of potential album names. We slowly whittled them down and decided that Sister Moon was the strongest title for the record.

Definitely. Right now I'm working on my next record, and I have two possible titles that I'm going back and forth between.

Both, in a way. In today's world, I think about how we can connect a record to every platform possible. It's silly, but even while I'm making records I think about which emojis I'll use when I post.

There are four moon emojis, so we can really run with that. It was as much about the concept as it was about the aesthetic.

For that song, everything came together rather quickly. I feel that songs are either written in about 20 minutes or over about six months. There's nothing in between. They either come very quickly, or I toil over them for weeks.

The latest record I'm writing now is a very different process. My brother and I are arranging it, and we're going to get into the studio in a couple of weeks. I was writing it in the style of my song Before I Buy a Gun, trying to emulate Appalachian folk songs.

For that song, my process was different from anything I'd done before. I wrote the lyrics and melody without a guitar. I find it much easier to write with a guitar because it provides assistance in finding melody lines, and things can flow so well.

For this whole record, I sat on my couch with the voice-memo app on my iPhone, saying lyrics and figuring out melody lines. I must have looked like a completely unwell human. If anyone had seen me doing it, they would have said, “Dear God, maybe you should try something else.”

That was six weeks of doing it every day: writing lyrics, trying to find melodies, taking walks, having a new idea and recording it. It was a totally different process. Writing with a guitar might take 20 minutes to work out a song; without a guitar, it took six weeks of working on it every day.

I really believe you have to open yourself up to it. It's almost as if you're a conduit. If you don't show up, nothing will come. But if you allow the space and time for things to flow, they will happen.

I believe in setting a timer for an hour and saying, “I'm not going to check my texts or make an email. I'm sitting here, and I'm going to figure out what's coming through.”

Sometimes I teach songwriting lessons to younger children, and one thing I notice with many of them is a real knee-jerk response to write a lot. They want to get as much as possible into the song.

I always say, “This is great. Take this concept and boil it down to the fewest possible words.” How can you say it with the least amount of words? I'm not talking about simply saying, “I am sad.” How can you say it more effectively? Cut as much of the fat as you can.

For beginning songwriters, that's a good method. There's a temptation to add lots of unnecessary words to lyrics, and you want to boil them down as much as possible.

The other two things I'd say are: listen widely. Don't just listen to your favourite genre; listen to all types of music and figure out what other songwriters are doing well. How are they sharing these concepts effectively?

Also, become an avid reader. Read other people's words. How do other people tell stories? Read Mary Oliver's poetry. Read Shakespeare. Read widely, and start to develop your own voice by learning from other people's voices.

There's a lot going on in this song. It encapsulates the final idea of the album and an idea that runs through it all.

I was raised in a very conservative religious environment, specifically a conservative Christian environment, and I've spent a lot of time unpacking those ideas. A Fox, a Bird is about deconstructing many of those conservative ideas.

The record is intertwined with St. Francis and different visions for what spirituality can be. We've also had 2,000 years of Christianity, and there is the sad fact that it has been so intertwined with colonialism, which has completely damaged the Earth.

There's this idea that we're supposed to have dominion over nature, and we're doing a terrible job. It's a ridiculous idea that has helped destroy the Earth. Sister Moon has a lot to do with pushing back against those ideas.

St. Francis of Assisi was such a powerful voice for loving and caring for the Earth, and for being part of it rather than having dominion over it. A Fox, a Bird is the final expression of pushing back against some of the more harmful ideas that permeated the environment I was raised in, and of trying to have a bigger, more expansive view of our place on Earth and what we're supposed to be doing to care for it.

My friend Alexander Jeffery made the film. We had already worked together on a film called A Chance Encounter. I acted in it, wrote the soundtrack, and we made the whole film in Sicily.

His next big project was telling the story of his friend's journey with autism and being on the spectrum. They spent a long time making that film. I think they started working on it after we shot A Chance Encounter, and they were able to shoot a lot of it during COVID.

I knew he was working on the film, and then my brother David composed the entire soundtrack. They wanted a final song with lyrics because David's soundtrack was completely instrumental. He composed music for different moments in the film, but they wanted a final song as well.

I think Alex initially wanted to use the original version of the song, but it would have been much more expensive. At that time, I realised that my publisher was also the publisher of the person who wrote it, so we could clear the publishing side quickly. I could then donate the master recording to Alex so they could use it in the film.

This is what's so great about making friends within your industry and working across industries—film, visual art and music. It's about the collective energy of working together to make a project as good as possible.

We know how expensive it can be to make art, so we ask how we can help one another make our projects as good as possible. Alex has made so many music videos for me, including my Portland video and my Waterfalling Downward video. He's been one of the most generous collaborators I've ever worked with.

When he says, “Will you do this for my film?”, I'm always like, “Of course. Just tell me what you need, and we'll get it done.” It was a very collaborative effort.

I saw the film premiere at the Omaha Film Festival, and it was truly a moving and incredible piece of work. It shows the importance of understanding neurodiversity, being supportive, and helping people in the ways we can.

Life is already hard, and sometimes your mind doesn't work with you in day-to-day life. It's important that we create villages around people when they're struggling and need help.

My brother David played piano on it. We knew we wanted to do piano and vocals, and we wanted something simple and stripped down.

We had a pretty good idea of what we were going to do. We got into the studio, and it came together very quickly. We knew, “This is the version we want.” It wasn't super premeditated; it was very free-form.

This is my second time touring the UK, including Scotland and England. The last time I came through, I played the major cities with my friend Lydia Luce, and we co-billed.

This time is going to be different. I'm going to do an “evening with” style show, with songs from different records. I've also been known to do quite a bit of storytelling, so it will be a collection of songs and stories from across my records — a nice night of music.

I think it will be entertaining and uplifting. I've been performing songs about hope and change across America for the last year and a half, so there will be quite a few protest songs as well as songs that people know. It's going to be a good time.

This is my second time playing in the UK, but I haven't played many of these cities before. The last time I was here, I played London and Glasgow—you hit the major cities. I have played Brighton before, but I've never played Sheffield, Bristol, Birmingham or Petworth.

That's exciting and a little daunting because you wonder who is going to show up to these shows. I've heard great things about all the venues, so I'm excited for all of it.

I really love England. I've visited twice just for fun, and I love the North and Yorkshire. The landscape is beautiful, and the sea is wonderful. I'm also a massive foodie, so I love Indian food. I'm obsessed with trying new Indian restaurants, and I've asked my email list to send me recommendations for the best local places. I'm really excited.

I hope it is!

I love it.

I love it. The event in Petworth is the Yellow Moon Festival, which is a music festival. There will be a lot of artists there.

That's a great question. I'll be doing a solo set, but most of the venues have local openers who will be playing as well. It should be a really nice night, blending a local songwriter with this random person from Nebraska.

Thanks so much. This was so fun!

I think that's great. AndreaVonKampen.com also has everything you need to know. If you sign up for my newsletter, I send it out twice a month with information, stories and other things. There are many ways to connect.

Thank you all so much for having me today. This has been great.