Remembering Dave Camp, 1968-2015

The local musician and creative force succumbed to cancer last week.

Something remarkable occurred on social media early last week, as Portland musician Dave Camp lay at home, dying of the stomach cancer he'd been diagnosed with three and a half months before, and to which he finally succumbed in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Camp's Facebook page was overrun by a tsunami of love and admiration, generated by the seismic impact his life and work had on the musical landscape of Portland and far beyond.

Post after post over those days made it clear that Camp was cherished not only for his music, but his infectious enthusiasm for all manner of creative projects, genuine kindness to friends and strangers alike, an unpretentious philosophical bent and recurrent hilarity. "His humor was a river that just poured out of him," recalls vocalist Sarah King, a longtime collaborator and friend. "And then, on the other hand, he could be equally still and thoughtful in the middle of the noisiest bar or crowded venue."

In fact, Camp himself had primed the pump for that Facebook display with a series of updates he wrote over the precipitous course of his illness, alternately musing on the possibility of imminent demise and holding out hope for a reversal of fortune. But one concern he frequently returned to was how best to enable his loved ones and community to cope with his illness, and in the event of his death. In one post, apparently from the day he received his diagnosis, he wrote, "I'm aware that we're all doing this together in a way. I have to go out and surf the big waves but you have stand on the beach and watch this little dot out there get tossed around by Poseidon and hellfire and that requires some patience and curiosity and grit. Ya poor bastards. Please have a sense of humor, pack a picnic, and know that some people are born to go to these places and I am most certainly one of them. I wouldn't have it another way."

Raised in the well-to-do San Francisco suburb of Danville, Calif., Dave Camp came to Portland from Texas in 1999, having been invited by bassist Nancy Hess to record in her new basement studio after they met in New York that January and discovered an instantaneous musical bond. "He called in March to tell me he was coming out," she recalls. "When he arrived in April I asked how long he was planning to stay, and he said, 'Oh, I just thought I'd move here.'" 

Within a few years, Camp became a driving force in a band that performed ecstatic yet faithful versions of famous rock songs for a series of fanciful events staged by the Kaosmosis collective. That group was eventually christened the Nowhere Band, and would go on to stage a spectacularly successful annual run of holiday concerts called White Album Christmas, featuring the entirety of the Beatles' most challenging LP performed live and note-perfect to the accompaniment of circus performers—a clear expression of Camp's ethos of being faithful to rock 'n' roll's past but always trying to give the familiar a fresh creative spin. Resplendent in a white suit or some multicolored glam or psychedelic finery, flamboyantly sunglassed and frequently grinning, Camp delivered technically proficient and stylishly executed guitar work, supple lead vocals and empathetic harmonies.

But Camp's musical skills extended well beyond classic-rock covers, and the project he developed with Hess, dubbed Stereovision, would go on to produce one of Portland's singular albums of the era, a self-titled 2004 release. As an alternative to the sensitive singer-songwriter material they'd composed in the past, Hess says, "We wanted to make music that would change your state. Elevate. Celebrate." Blending classic- and indie-rock influences with dance-informed beats and Buddhism-informed lyrics, Stereovision also featured multi-instrumentalist Camp as a newly minted, diligently self-taught drummer. "He could play, you know, keep a beat," says Hess, "but he was always looking to sink a little deeper in it. And he was the kind of guy who was undaunted by a monumental task—in fact, he just loved the process. He said, 'If you've got a mountain of bricks that you need to put somewhere else, you just start moving it, brick by brick.'" 

WW critic Shane Danaher wrote that Stereovision's "kaleidoscopic funk mixes a welcome combination of live and sampled instruments to form songs that sound like something Of Montreal might come up with if it took a couple deep breaths and chilled the fuck out." One CD Baby customer called their release "a dreamy album made by beautiful love robots from a mountain on the moon." Some initial copies were accompanied by a whimsical, full-sized "activity book."

"If you listen to the work he did with Stereovision," says Nowhere Band bassist Arthur Parker, "you can hear a message there for middle America. A lyric like 'I wanna see you around until the daylight' was more than a 'let's party' message. If I had to try to sum up the underlying sentiment, I'd say something like, 'You don't have to live the safe, boring life that people tell you is correct and normal. You could stay up late with a bunch of freaks who are more interesting than you could know. Trust me, it's a richer experience, so please, please, hang out with us. All are welcome!'" 

Camp's many other musical endeavors included backing singer-songwriter James Low and vocalist King, and producing soundtracks for films and commercials. His omnivorous creativity also encompassed the creation of a Stereovision-branded graphic novel in 2014—Camp having only taught himself to draw in recent years—and co-producing an award-winning documentary film, The Wanteds. But his series of Facebook posts made it explicit that his ultimate creative project was his life itself, right to the end. "Dave died well because he lived well," says Parker. "He lived well consciously, and with purpose, and living well is also what his art is explicitly about." 

In his penultimate post to Facebook, nine days before his death, and following what he called "one of the strangest, most beautiful, most informative days in my life," Camp wrote, "The odds of a day like this are nil and that's exactly the kind of rare odds I'm thrilled to encounter right now—I'm dedicated to walking a rare path to a rare destination—whatever it may be. This lived up to that in spades. Love all of you who were part of it, love all of you who are here in spirit. Love all of you because love seems to be the dream soup that is floating my surreal body through its paces. It may literally be the only constant in this funhouse version of reality. I stand in awe."

MORE DAVE CAMP:

  1. An anthology of Camp's Facebook posts and others' responses can be found here.
  2. Dave Camp with the Nowhere Band performing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" for White Album Christmas.
  3. Stereovision at CD Baby.
  4. Dave and Lindsey Bostwick performing "Here Comes the Sun."

"Limitless Love for Dave Camp: An Evening of Music, Words & Joy for Those Who Loved Him" will take place at Refuge PDX, 116 SE Yamhill St., on Wednesday, July 22. 7 pm. 21+.  

WWeek 2015

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