Camper Van Beethoven alum improves with age
I’d like to tell you I was a fan of Camper Van Beethoven in the eighties. I’d like to, but I can’t. I wasn’t remotely that cool.
My musical tastes then were dictated entirely by what was in easy grasp, which wasn’t much considering the town I grew up in didn’t have a decent record store until the end of that decade. Still, I knew who they were, I knew they were considered important, and later on I discovered why.
To this day we tend to give a little extra respect to the performers who manage to blend seemingly disparate styles into something new, even though it’s not at all uncommon anymore (Brandi Carlile killed the Grammys this year on just such a platform). It was a rarity then, however, with a few bands like Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull managing to successfully blend folk and rock (though to be honest, Tull actually did quite a bit more than that).
Then along came Camper Van Beethoven, a band that combined punk, ska, country, folk, and world music in a way that simply had not been done before. CVB was “alternative” before alternative was a thing. When the band split at the end of the decade, one member went on to form Cracker, another joined the Counting Crows, and still others, including founding member Victor Krummenacher, formed Monks of Doom. It is Victor who will be our subject this week.
Continually active for over three decades, Krummenacher has lent his considerable talent to many projects and pursued a highly regarded solo career, with ten albums to his credit, including the upcoming Blue Pacific.
I had a chance to listen to an early release track from that album entitled “Skin and Bones”, and if the single is indicative of what we can expect from the rest of the album, the artist has yet again raised his own personal bar of excellence.
We often speak of an artist’s music “maturing”, yet I hate to invoke that term now because it implies there was ever a time when Krummenacher’s music was anything less than mature. That isn’t so. Still, there is something in this track that makes it feel like catching up with a long lost friend. All the familiar qualities are there, but tempered with time, wisdom, and a pronounced graying about the temples.
Perhaps “matured” is the right term, but in the same way that a fine scotch, already twelve years in the cask, will mature after an additional few decades in that self-same container.
The dream-like strains of a steel guitar and the joyful chords of what I presume to be a Hammond B3 counterpoint the otherwise straightforward sincerity of a man and his guitar. His vocal style on this track has been compared to Dylan, though I find it far more akin to the comfort and ease of Mark Knopfler, while the song’s structure, its chord progression and instrumental arrangement, is positively Bowie-esque.
The song’s theme, as described by the artist, is “self-critical, but not punitive,” and it may be this most of all that keeps bringing me back to the idea of maturity. Honestly, I would think anyone, anywhere could find the beauty and value of this soulful track, but to those of us of a certain age, it resonates in a way few tunes ever do.
You can hear the track now at thevinyldistrict.com (just search for “Victor” and “Skin and Bones”) and I will say again, if the rest of the album follows suit (and there’s no reason to assume it won’t) then this upcoming release is a legitimate treasure.
You’ll have a chance to hear Victor (along with Monks of Doom) on April 27th at 529 in Atlanta, or April 29th at Supper Club in Nashville, and it seems quite likely that I may see you there at either or both of those shows.