May 21, 2001
Jim Henry's daughter takes road less traveled as singer
___By John Pierce
___Baptists Today
___BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (ABP) --Hearing a preacher's kid sing is not so unusual, but hearing Kate Campbell is. Her clear voice, thought-provoking lyrics and musical warmth draw listeners from a wide variety of backgrounds.
___Though her fifth and latest CD release, "Wandering Strange," contains soulfully arranged hymns and original songs of faith, Campbell cannot be rightly labeled "a Christian singer." Her folk-country-blues-shaped music and philosophical openness make her athome in both churches and the numerous music clubs she visits across the country and beyond.
KATE CAMPBELL
___"I resisted it a long time," Campbell said of the gospel album she recorded in three days with talented friends in Muscle Shoals, Ala. "This is not contemporary Christian music; this is Kate Campbell doing what I want to do."
___What she did first was sing "On Jordan's Stormy Banks" as an encore while touring England with Emmylou Harris. Fans suggested she record some of the hymns she has sung since her early church days in Sledge, Miss.
___As the oldest child of former Southern Baptist Convention President Jim Henry and his wife, Jeanette, much of Campbell's music has been shaped by church experiences and growing up in a time of racial unrest. Social justice is a theme found on each of her recording projects.
___So it's not surprising the album that started out to be a collection of hymns now includes powerful original compositions like "10,000 Lures," that wrestles with the age-old struggles of temptation, and "Bear It Away," that focuses on the deadly 1963 bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
___"Every time I saw pictures of the four little girls (killed in the bombing), it upset me," said Campbell, sitting outside the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and facing the brick church where the tragedy occurred. As a songwriter, however, she "couldn't find a way to put it together."
___But writer Flannery O'Conner's use of the words, "The violent bear it away," taken from the gospel of Matthew, gave Campbell the phrase she needed. "It was one of the hardest songs I've ever written."
___Starting with a catchy phrase--what Campbell calls "Nashville-style song writing"--is evident throughout her impressive collection from heart-wrenching songs to her lighter works like "See Rock City," "Jesus and Tomatoes" and the oft-requested "Funeral Food."
___"I just see things and think, 'That's a story that's got to be told,'" Campbell told a coffeehouse crowd at Birmingham's Church at Brook Hills in March. And not all of her songs deal with life's harshest moments.
___"My mother doesn't know if I'm serious or not--and she's afraid that I am," said Campbell with a grin before strumming her sunburst Takamime cutaway guitar and singing the song based on a roadside sign proclaiming, "Jesus and Tomatoes Coming Soon."
___Campell explains that her mother is the musical person in the family and her father is the story-teller.
___"I used to love going to church, and I loved the singing more than the preaching--but don't tell my daddy," the 39-year-old told her audience between songs. She speaks often of being the preacher's kid, but doesn't identify him as the prominent pastor of the 10,000-member First Baptist Church of Orlando, Fla.
___Her father admits he first wished his daughter had become exclusively a Christian singer. But Campbell's expressed comfort in both secular and church settings won out--and even her pastor-father now can appreciate that.
___"I've preached and taught our people to be involved in the secular world," as a means of "being salt and light," said Henry, adding that the various musical venues give his daughter opportunities to express faith among those unrelated to church.
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