Campbell American Guitars

So, I play with Reeves Gabrels. The path to Reeves involves a lot of Boston names:

I did a tour of colleges and coffee houses with an artist named Jen Cohen in the late nineties. The drummer on that tour was a recent Boston transplant, Kevin Rapillo.

 Rapillo introduced me to songwriter, drummer, producer Tom Hambridge (Johnny Winter, Susan Tedeschi, George Thorogood). I played with Tom off and on and met his guitarist, Boston legend Sal Baglio. Turned out Sal and I loved a lot of the same Britpop and I played a handful of gigs in Boston and Nashville with Sal and went to England with him and Ducky Carlisle.

Through Rapillo I also met Jaime Rubin, also an ex-Bostonian, who runs The Family Wash, a great restaurant and music venue in Nashville. I played a few years in Jaime’s band which regularly hosted guests such as: Audley Freed (Black Crowes, Peter Frampton, the Dixie Chicks), Rich Gilbert (Frank Black and the Catholics), Fred Eltringham (the Wallflowers), Stu Kimball (Dylan) and eventually Reeves Gabrels.

 Rapillo, Rubin and Gabrels were in a Boston band called Modern Farmer. For months before Reeves moved to town Jaime would say Reeves is coming in for the show next week – here, learn these songs. I would and Reeves wouldn’t.

Finally Reeves comes to town, we meet, and I felt like I’d played with him already and here we are. Turns out Reeves loved a record I played on for Memphis/Nashville pop icon Ross Rice – years before our first meeting.

 I also spent a few years playing with Nashville session ace Pat Buchanan (patbmusic.tripod.com). Pat’s played on too many records to list but would front his own Beatles/Mott the Hoople influenced band on weekends.

Pat and I also played for years with Rykodisc artist Jeff Finlin (myspace.com/jefffinlin) a truly genius Americana poet/songwriter.

 Along with Reeves I’ve recently played with Curt Perkins (curtperkins.com, myspace.com/curtperkins), a white soul artist and producer. I’ve done Curt’s original material and a side soul project of 60’s and 70’s groove music and played on some sessions that he’s produced.

For more info:

• http://www.myspace.com/imkelvis