GRRRL POWER!
CORRiN CAMPBELL TALKS TO ROCKWiRED
ABOUT HER BAND'S DEBUT CD GAME NiGHT
BALANCiNG MUSiC WiTH A LiFE iN THE SERViCE
AND ESCHEWiNG THE ANGRY FEMALE ROCKER STANCE

MARCH 8, 2010

iNTERViEWED BY BRiAN LUSH
In my tenure as a music journalist, the notion of a tough, aggressive female rocker is not an alien one to me. Many of my favorite interview subjects have been with women who could kick my ass such as LITA FORD, TERRI NUNN of BERLIN or the sadly defunct all-female band SCARLET SINS. Along comes a singer-songwriter like CORRIN CAMPBELL who emphasizes girl-power through her and - her band - THE ELECTION’s raw, gritty, balls-to-the-wall rock approach that eschews the victim-hood and the angst that had COURTNEY LOVE leaping into crowds or PAT BENATAR shoulder shimmying out into the street with a bunch of dime-a-dancers. If that wasn’t enough to set her apart from the AVRIL LAVIGNES of the world, CAMPBELL is enlisted in the US ARMY! Let’s see your average woman rock warrior do that! In speaking with CAMPBELL, playing the role of a woman wronged runs contrary to the message and the sound that he wishes to put forth. “I want to be different because I don’t like harnessing anger and creating angry music.” says CAMPBELL “A lot of people say that they get their anger out by putting it into song and then putting out these angry songs like ALANIS MORRISETTE. It works for people like her and I have respect for that but for us – even though some of the lyrics are full of angst, the sound of the music is pretty bouncy and positive and very organic.”

ROCKWIRED spoke with CORRIN CAMPBELL over the phone. Here is how it went.

Talk about juggling rock music with a life in the service. That sounds like a very interesting place to be.
It is an interesting place to be. For us, the biggest challenge is to coordinate schedules because obviously the military is very demanding. We’re also in the Army band but we play a lot of concert band material which is more old school and there is also an Army rock band and we end up playing a lot of covers. No matter what, we know we won’t be able to play our original music and do what we do until we leave the Army.

THE ELECTION is an interesting name for a band. Where does it come from?
We call it that because the group has ended up being comprised of friends. We never held auditions or put out a CRAIGSLIST ad. It’s always come together by a friend of a friend who knew somebody. TONY and I have been in the military and were deployed together back in 2004 and that was the beginning of that relationship. We’ve had different people coming into the band and leaving the band but it’s always been people that we knew personally that happened to play guitar.

Now that GAME NIGHT is out there for people to hear, how do you feel about the finished album?
I’m pretty proud of it. In the hardcopy you can see that the whole thing was put together by TONY and me. We recorded, mixed, mastered, engineered and produced everything. We had a couple of secret guitar players and that is another thing about THE ELECTION – I elected some of our talented friends to play on the album. For the most part, TONY and I completed the album ourselves. Having it out there and getting a good response to it has been both humbling and rewarding at the same time just because we have hundreds and hundreds of hours into this.

In listening to GAME NIGHT, the tone of the album is different from what you hear from a lot of  - I hate to say this – “female” rockers.
Don’t worry about it. I appreciate that comment.

Do you think that confident, easygoing tone stems from having been in the military?
I’m not sure. I want to be different because I don’t like harnessing anger and creating angry music. A lot of people say that they get their anger out by putting it into song and then putting out these angry songs like ALANIS MORRISETTE. It works for people like her and I have respect for that but for us – even though some of the lyrics are full of angst, the sound of the music is pretty bouncy and positive and very organic. We’ve tried to stay away from a lot of over-produced instruments and keep things like bass, drums, guitar and piano and that is pretty much it. To take this raw, organic rock instrumentation and create something that is pop and positive is a good challenge for us. I like or be different. It’s a fad now for women singers to be angry and oppressed. I want to empower women who listen to music so they can feel like they are overcoming it rather than being angry at the world.

Talk about how music started for you.
Oh goodness! I’ve been playing piano by ear since I was four or five years old and I’ve always tinkered on it. I’ll never proclaim to be entirely proficient but I definitely learned tot love the instrument. That’s what I write songs on actually which is interesting because we’re a guitar-based band. That metamorphosis is interesting in itself. I’ve been doing that since I was four or five and I really started singing in middle school. I was in high school choirs and things like that. I was a cellist from the age of ten. I played cello all through middle school and high school and played in local orchestras and thought that I would do that forever and then I found out that the Army bands doesn’t have but a few string positions, and I really wanted to go into the Army so my recruiter told me that they had bass guitar players. So I learned bass and I had only played it for about five months before I came into the military and I managed to still qualify to be in the Army band because the two instruments are similar. It’s like the main character in SCHOOL OF ROCK telling the girl that if you play cello, turn it like this, put it on its side and “Ce-llo! You’ve got a bass”. That was really what I ended up doing. I think that there are a lot of female bass players out there that got started on a string instrument. As a cellist, I had a lot of classical influences and then I got thrown into the Army band. I wasn’t familiar with concert band music that the Army does. I played in a lot of rock bands and I ended up singing for quite a few things. I didn’t start studying Commercial Voice until around 2003. Some people will say that they’ve been singing forever but for me, I didn’t really start going for it until around 2003. This album contains all of the beginnings of my songwriting. It’s a combination of my first five years of songwriting. Obviously a lot of stuff got cut but the first song that I put together was PASS IT UP. We did that so people could hear the different styles that we are capable of. We try to keep it cohesive yet have some variance. That’s the story behind my musical background.

What inspired your decision to go into the military?
I think it was to make my mom mad and to make my dad proud. My mom is a democrat and my dad is a republican. Seriously, it seemed like such a picture perfect occupation to do music for a living. You don’t ever get rich in the army but it is definitely rewarding. It’s a good paycheck. You can survive on it. I also knew that I could also be an artist and not be starving. I didn’t even realize that part way through my career that I would find more music that I wanted to do that the Army couldn’t provide for me. Without the Army band, I would not be the objective artist that I am now. You’re surrounded by musicians who are better than you and who will you that you need to get your game together and step up and do more. That enabled me to do what I do now. Without the Army, I wouldn’t even be doing music, I’m sure. I would’ve gotten a business degree and done that for the rest of my life. It would be great but I wouldn’t be doing what I love.

How do you go about writing songs?
I think that musical composition is my strength as a songwriter. Lyricism is not exactly my strong suit. I always end up writing the music first and like that better because I want the music to move people. I tend to write the music and let it take me some where. A piece of music will remind me of whatever has happened in my life and then I write the lyrics and put it together. There are some lyricists out there that can paint pictures in you mind with their lyrics and I’m more about the music and making sure that the lyrics are relatable. I want to have some intelligence to my lyric but at the same time I want it to be accessible to everybody.

What songs off of the album resonate for you the most and why?
REMEMBER ME is the most heartfelt. It’s written about my brother who is about ten years younger than me and he lives where I’m from – Superior, Wisconsin.  I left for the Army when he was so young and it was heartbreaking for me to not be involved in his life everyday. We weren’t the “pick on each other” kind of kids. We got a long great because we were so far apart in age. He wasn’t getting into my lipstick or anything. The lyrics say ‘put my face in a frame/Twice a year is all we get’. Lyrically, I’m more connected to that one than any of my other songs. There is a little bit of folk on that song and I grew listening to some bluegrass and country. I also really love SUNBEAM which is written about my faith –I’m Christian – and it can be relatable to anyone who is looking for a hero. It’s this aggressive song but it’s got this vulnerability to it, which is me. I’ve got a tough exterior. The Army makes you harden up and makes you be what you need to be but there is still a person in there and I think SUN BEAM is reflective of that.

How have people responded to the music in a live situation?
It is the strangest thing to me. I am in my mid twenties and we end up attracting everyone but that age group. The people who really love our music are teenagers from sixteen to twenty one and they’ll get up front and clap and fans who know us will sing along. They’ve got this great energy. When we play with local bands, there are some bands whose parents will show up and support them. You’ll se these thirty-five to fifty year old moms and dads who obviously have some kind of rocker background because a lot of rocker kids have rocker parents. They’ll be in back with their arms crossed and leaning against the wall and will come up after the show and say, ‘I really love your sound!’ The greatest compliment that I’ve ever gotten – quite a few times actually – is being compared to HEART. That is a gigantic compliment. I have tremendous respect for what they did for women in rock music. It’s the generation below and above where we get the best response from.

What would you like someone to come away with after they’ve heard this album?
I’m all about “girl power”. For the men, I want them to take away the fact that the music is strong and intelligent and that I’m not a woman that is going to spit in his face but that I’m a woman that someone can have a conversation with. I want women who listen to it to feel empowered in a positive way not an angry way. I want women to overcome the idea of oppression and grasp onto the idea of success and push through without feeling like they are being overcome by the world.

That is “girl power”!
Yes! I feel like an angry woman is still weak in a way and an angry woman can love and overcome.

BRIAN LUSH holds a BA in Creative Writing from  the UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO. He established ROCKWIRED on New Years of 2004 and hasn’t looked back since. From January 2005 to March 2009, LUSH was the host of the weekly internet radio show ROCKWIRED LIVE. He produced the program for the AMERICAN RADIO NETWORK. As the editor-in-chief for ROCKWiRED MAGAZiNE, LUSH is hands-on when it comes to interviewing and building a lasting rapport with the artists that come ROCKWiRED’s way. As a youngster, BRIAN LUSH had no idea what kind of seed was being planted by reading magazines such as HIT PARADE, HIGH TIMES, SPIN, REQUEST (remember that one?) and even ROLLING STONE (but to a significantly lesser degree). “Those were the days before the internet and being a rock journalist looked like the coolest job imaginable.” says LUSH “But reading these magazines had me imagining that one day I’d be the artist giving all of the clever answers to some poor guy with a tape recorder. Well, life has a way of surprising you. Now, I’m the poor guy with the tape recorder and asking all of the questions.”