Zane Campbell is the real deal. A royal Appalachian music bloodline, a life torn apart by drink and drugs, undeniable lyrical genius, a refusal to conform to country-music-as-beer-commercial. What does it all amount to? Maybe nothing more sitting on a torn recliner in the yard with a scruffy guitar in hand, singing your heart out to the leafless trees. It’s likely that the universe has no center and that precisely no one’s judgment of success or failure, of a life well-lived or wasted, matters. Still, notes ring out and rustle the leaves. Music is a physical thing, and what’s physical is indestructible, changing forms but never fully divested of its previous content, traveling and traveling. Zane Campbell and his scribbles and his deep tremolo are made of aunt Ola Wave, her own forgotten ancestors, and his real deal life. And maybe the future too. 9
Campbell, Zane. Ola Wave. Emperor Records, 2017. Reviewed October 6, 2024. Notable tracks: “Ola Wave,” “A Way Around It,” “Tear Down the Fences.”