Have you heard the ‘Ballad of the Joking Jesus’ from Ulysses? I set that to country music. He told me his songwriting models came not so much from classic country but from the Classics: “I love Ulysses. He often breaks into song, belting out snatches of his hundreds of lyrics, some decades old, some written yesterday. He tells self-deprecating, off-color stories about himself and his family, punctuated by maniacal laughing jags. In person, he is a natural raconteur with the edge of a shock jock. Instead, he regaled me with anecdotes and allusions about his heroes and influences, many of them from his family tree. I went to Campbell’s house in Elkton to pay my respects, but I soon realized that the album, much less himself, was the last thing he wanted to talk about. (Full disclosure: I ended up writing the liner notes for Zane’s 2017 album “Ola Wave.” My compensation was a few beers and copies of the CD.) I knew this was something special, and I confirmed it with friends who’d had a similar epiphany. I wanted to learn more about the force behind the best country album I’d heard in years - a low-budget CD released on an unknown label, homemade and visionary and raw with just enough varnish to brighten its inner darkness, like a modern-day William Blake singing bare-bones, hardcore country. But if that was even possible, Kitchens, as he was about to learn, would first have to save Campbell from himself.Ĭountry singer-songwriter Zane Campbell and his guitar at his home in Elkton, Md.

To Kitchens, Campbell was the kind of artist who could save country music from what he felt it had become: heartland consumerism run amok. “I was thinking, ‘Here’s the best country singer in Maryland or anywhere else at a godd- nursing home in Cecil County.’ ” This wasn’t oldies nostalgia but a form of catharsis.

But the music clearly meant just as much to Campbell himself. The familiar songs meant a lot to these folks. He included weepers like Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces,” a favorite with the audience that often spurred lonely hearts to do just that. He sounded like a mountain opera singer.”Ĭampbell played several sets that kept Kitchens and the residents - among them Campbell’s 90-year-old mother, Eva, and his Aunt Darthula - riveted.

“I’d never heard anybody sing with that kind of command,” Kitchens says, “and with all the inflections and nuance in his voice tones and the crazy notes he was hitting, from a growl to a tremble. What he was hearing in Elkton weren’t just tasteful cover versions but masterful interpretations of the country-and-western canon that rivaled the originals. Kitchens had grown up with a Vietnam vet father playing classic country records around the house in Owensboro, Ky. Beyond the sheer force of Campbell’s presence, there was also his remarkable vocal range.

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