On his newly announced LP, Proceed, guitarist and composer Jon Camp reached into his heart and produced a compassionate set of deeply moving folk-inspired meditations on family, politics and memory.

From American Primitive solo fantasias to the lush, complex full-group arrangements that you hear on this record, the DC/Maryland-based Camp has greatly evolved musically over the years. The compositions on this album have the feel of classic Americana string music being translated through a modern psychedelic-country lens, drawing connections and contrasts between the old and the new. With the contributions of a veritable orchestra of heavy hitters, including the likes of Elkhorn/Heavy Lidders’ Drew Gardner, Scott Verrastro, of Kohoutek (and also the Heavy Lidders), Joseph Allred and cellist Kaitlin Grady, Camp’s instrumental pieces here developed a life of their own.

The emotional weight of the melody of each guitar-based song is bolstered and greatly elaborated on by a confluence of pedal steel, glockenspiel, Hammond organs, vibraphones, accordion and a whole menagerie of other evocative instruments. Every track begins small and quickly blooms into an exuberant ecosystem of sprawling countermelodies and little rivulets of complimentary mini-digressions, all while warm strings and twinkling percussion enhance and decorate the entire atmosphere. This is done especially well on the record’s first single, the wistful “Kerosene Goodbye,” with its twangy slide, rolling drums and bluesy guitar lines that often seem to be referencing “Good King Wenceslas,” once again bridging the old with the new. Check it out:

Jon had this to say about this beautiful track:

“Kerosene Goodbye” was the first composition I wrote after getting a b-bender installed on my Telecaster, and like a number of tracks on this album, I’ve been playing it live throughout the years, developing it to where it is now. It’s one of my favorite compositions I’ve written thus far, and I like the interplay in this arrangement between the dual bending of the b-bender and the pedal steel, Kaitlin Grady’s cello, and Dave Jones’s atmospheric guitar blending into the mix, backed by the rhythm section of longtime collaborators Nick Arrivo and Ryan Peterson. Thematically, a number of the pieces on this album draw from my nightly calls with my parents and the family history I’ve absorbed through these calls. The title for this song is an homage to my dad moving into the age of electricity on his childhood farmhouse in Iowa in the early 1940s.

This sense of familial comfort and pleasant memories of days gone past is so obviously evident in this and all of the other tracks on the album, you feel as though you’re invited into these amiable recollections and parental conversations. Yet he, and his group of contributing musicians, convey these instantly relatable emotions and vibes without singing a single word. That’s power, my friends.

Be sure to preorder Proceed on vinyl, CD or digital from Centripetal Force ahead of its October 17th release date.

-KH