Andrea Von Kampen x Rankd
Nebraska to Brighton – Andrea Von Kampen visits the Folklore Rooms
It’s 6pm at Brighton’s favourite acoustic-led venue, the Folklore Rooms, and we’ve stumbled up the narrow staircase to greet Nebraska’s Andrea Von Kampen ahead of her soundcheck. After recently embarking on her highly anticipated UK tour, we’ve been kindly invited down to chat about her experience so far, and all the unmissable highlights that have defined Andrea’s recent releases and shows. Her delicate, stripped, vocal-led folk has captivated audiences around the UK, garnering the undivided attention of the New York Times, NPR Music, Atwood Magazine and Americana UK (amongst many more) – and rightly so.
K: Great lets just jump straight in! So, we’ve caught you during your highly anticipated UK tour. Yesterday you were in Sutton, you’ve played Birmingham, Newcastle… you’ve been all around the UK. It’s not your first time, and you’re due to play Yellow Moon Festival tomorrow too, which is not too far from here actually. What’s the highlight been so far during this UK run of shows?
A: The distances are so much less than what I’m used to. Like everybody is so shocked that we’re driving 3 to 4 hours a day. I’m like, this is a good drive day for a US tour…this is a small drive day. So 45 minutes? Nothing! We’ve had, I think this might be our third sellout show so far and I’ve done five shows and just like the people…the people are so into music here. It’s really quite special. Like I think you all have such a listening culture and we have that in pockets in the US for sure. But it’s so ubiquitous here that it’s really satisfying to play for.
K: You’ve been continuing to build your music catalogue demonstrated with the release of your first cover ‘Rivers’ in June and a cover of Gregory Alan Isakov’s ‘Master & A Hound’ earlier this month. These tracks demonstrate your delicate vocals in a new spotlight – what made you pick these tracks?
A: Yeah, so this summer I’ve been releasing cover songs, and so my first one was Rivers by my pal, The Tallest Man on Earth. And then I’m doing the Gregory cover, Master and a Hound, which I just released and then at the end of the summer I’ll release Hearts and Bones by Paul Simon. These were just like 3 challenging songs that I forced myself to learn to get better at guitar and that I wanted to start playing live. After like a year of touring with these live, I was like, why don’t I just record these? So I went to my studio – I record in my hometown – and we just like knocked out all three of them in one day. I’m just slowly releasing them over the summer because, you know, like releasing is the name of the game…so that’s kind of why I’m doing it.
K: I imagine you’ve got quite a strong team around you…so kind of musician wise, is there anyone you can spotlight?
A: Totally, yeah. My brother David arranges all of my music. I mean, these cover songs were a little different because I just sort of sang and played them…but like for my albums, my brother David arranges and kind of produces with me. Then our longtime engineer James – it’s like the three of us work really closely in the studio. We just have our friends come out and play on it. We’re pals with a lot of the like Lincoln and Omaha Symphony Orchestra players, so they’ll come and play on it. There’s other like bands out of Lincoln: The Wild Woods are pals of mine, they’re playing on my new record. We actually have a great little community out there. I love to hire my friends. It’s a very circular economy kind of thing…that’s kind of how musicians survive, right?
K: I was going to say exactly that, you’ve got a community around you, and it’s a collaborative effort, right?
A: No artist is living on an island, you know? We all are only as good as the team we have around us.
K: So ‘Sister Moon’ was released in 2024, we are here a few years later now – how do you feel like your sound’s developed…do you feel like you’ve reached a new level of kind of like songwriting maturity?
A: Yes. As of late in that last year, I started writing protest songs after ‘He Who Shall Not Be Named’ was elected in my country. I was just so at a loss of what to do and I started to write these very old sounding Appalachian hymn type songs where I just like would sit down with my voice memo and just like record melodies into my phone with no guitar. I decided to do a bunch of songs like that where I didn’t start with guitar at all. I’ve had choirs across America sing these songs and people have been singing these at protests, so it’s like very important that they are for the voice first because the thought is like people may sing these without any instruments at all or just harmony. I started to write these very stripped backed hymns, protest anthems. This next record and the sound I’m getting at right now is so different than anything I’ve done before because it’s not really feeling guitar based, which is very foreign to me. So I’m excited for it. I think it’s going to feel very different than my other records.
K: I feel like it’s almost unlocked a new part of your brain.
A: Yeah, and it’s like liberating to not have to play guitar. It’s very liberating to start a song with like, this could go anywhere.
K: Your lyricism is very poetic in the sense that sometimes the meaning might not be immediately obvious – that you cover topics like environmentalism, nature, and I feel like you take a lot of inspiration from the world around you. For your newest release, would you say that nature is inspiring your process?
A: Yeah, totally. So nature was very informative with Sister Moon. I had read the Overstory by Richard Powers and that was incredibly important to that record for me. This new one, I would say it’s been very much just about the environment around me. It feels more people driven than ever. I do think like the space and the land in which I live on definitely influences the music, even when I’m not trying to have that be the situation. I have so many people say to me, oh my gosh, your music just feels like the Great Plains of Nebraska. I’ll be like, this was not the goal, but okay, fine!
K: On the topic of nature, I was having a look through your Instagram and I saw a post that was protesting mining in Minnesota…I feel like a lot of your fan base are really with you on that. Like you said, on your love of the natural world around you, you’ve used your music as a way to raise awareness, protest and strive for positive change. How do you feel fans have responded to your music?
A: Yeah, I would say like once a month some random person will be like: ‘I cannot in good conscience follow you anymore’. I’m always just like…that’s okay, don’t worry about it. Because the majority of people, I think, are on the side of sanity and humanity. There’s a bit of an element now of like…how can we not speak out against this? Like you get to a point where silence is complicity, so I just don’t care anymore at all about the few people who can’t in good faith follow me anymore. It’s a little bit like, go with god…I wish you the best!
K: Rankd spotlights artists in Brighton and beyond. With you travelling from Nebraska, I think it would be interesting to tap into your local music scene. When you first started performing, when you first started writing…how did the local music scene facilitate that?
A: When I first started performing, I would open for anyone who would let me open for them in Lincoln or Omaha, Des Moines, Kansas City…and I was a senior in college, and so I would like drive to Des Moines – 3 1/2 hours – play a show, drive home, get up, go to physics class. And at first it was just absolutely insane to play that many shows, but I think it was so good to sort of get into the whole ecosystem of Midwest music. Pretty early on I became friends with Dave Simonette who’s the lead singer of Trampled by Turtles and like pretty quickly they sort of took me under their wing and let me open shows and I just realized like the importance of getting out there and playing and honestly like playing for free as much as possible when you start and just making connections and then slowly that builds into something that’s like a very supportive and like fruitful career really.
K: You’ve moved from strength to strength, turning the heads of the New York Times, NPR Music, Atwood Magazine and Americana UK and you’re signed to Fantasy records – what’s been your career highlight so far?
A: Gosh. God, that is such a great question. And I don’t know if there’s one, but I would just say like the most meaningful thing is like hearing people tell you what the music means to them. You know…like a great New York Times quote is awesome and like an NPR shout out or a really cool festival, like all those things are great resume builders. But like having somebody say to you, my dad passed away and your music was one of our main connection points and I listened to it and I think of him, that’s the most powerful thing. That’s where the sweet spot lies. So I would say just those types of comments from fans are truly the most important thing.
K: And to kind of go on the contrary…would you say that there’s been a kind of big challenge in your career so far, like maybe a roadblock or something that’s maybe held you back?
A: Many…i’d say that the music industry at large is the roadblock. It’s incredibly centered around profit. It’s extremely exploitative. I didn’t realize that until I was in the thick of it and just sort of getting like eaten and spit out by the industry. I had incredibly dishonest people on my team…having to fire people…having to part ways with people. That’s the worst part. I would say that what I learned from all of this is like any successful artist or any artist that’s still doing it is doing it in spite of the industry sometimes, not because of them. And so it’s such an uphill battle to keep your art at the center of everything you do and to not like listen to all the noise because there’s so many people who have power in this industry who have terrible ideas. Trying to keep your guiding light is very difficult.
K: There’s so many rogue characters who kind of distort your vision y’know…
A: Yeah. It’s wild, so I don’t know, I have a great team around me now, but it took a lot of hard life lessons to get there.
K: That rounds up things quite nicely. Do you have any bucket list moments that you’re hoping for the remainder of this year or over the next five years?
A: Gosh, that’s a wonderful question. I would love to at least play Red Rocks. Like I’d love to open for someone who’s playing Red Rocks. Yeah, that’s like one of my favorite venues in the world. So that’s definitely one. I would say just like getting on more festivals is a real goal of mine, making this record in a way that I’m really proud of and putting out a musical expression that I really can get behind. Those are probably the three goals right now.
K: Thank you – enjoy the show tonight!
Photo by Analise Schrader
