On a wing and a prayer with Isobel Campbell

The multitalented maven takes a journey with her album Hawk

By Melissa Bobbitt
Published: September 1st, 2010 | 12:25am

In Shreveport, Louisiana, there's a hootenanny going on. It's a sweltering orgy of brass winds, bluesy guitar, and the impassioned vocals of a lovely lass. (Someone is even utilizing a rubber chicken for percussion). You can just imagine the alligators plodding along as these boisterous folks let their hair hang down on a rustic bayou porch.

But this isn't a scene written by Steinbeck or Twain. This isn't some bygone era of Americana. And one of these partiers isn't even American. The woman emitting that banshee scream is Scottish chanteuse Isobel Campbell. And even she (late of Glasgow's Belle & Sebastian) finds it peculiar that she has such an affinity for the old-time sound from the land of Uncle Sam.

"It’s the weirdest thing. I can’t help myself," Campbell says with a giggle during a recent phone conversation. "I can’t help but be so passionate about it and love it. I think I must have been a cowboy in a past life or something. My friends in Shreveport…they were like, 'How come a little girl from Scotland is like you?' And I’m like, 'I don’t know. Something has gone horribly wrong or right.'"

We vote that something went right. Over the course of four years, Campbell has released three southern-influenced albums with Screaming Trees front man Mark Lanegan. Their newest collaboration, Hawk (just released August 24 on Vanguard), is a dust-bowl throwback with gargantuan spirituals ("Lately"), sultry jazz ("Come Undone"), and a couple of Townes Van Zandt covers (one of which, "No Place To Fall," features the vocals of balladeer Willy Mason). Former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha also contributes a blistering solo to "You Won't Let Me Down Again." But like its predecessors, 2006's Ballad of the Broken Seas and 2008's Sunday at Devil Dirt (both on V2), Hawk is carried on the wings of Campbell and Lanegan's unique union: hers the voice of a darling sparrow; his the protective growl of a papa bear.

The Glaswegian artist says the literal and emotional journeys she embarked on were the soul of the album. "I think I had to leave the U.K.; I had to get out 'cause there was a guy back there that I just had to get away from," she recalls. "I had my heart broken twice in really quick succession. But by the second time, in January 2009, I was like, 'Oh stuff this. I’m getting on a plane out of here.' I just ran away, basically. Then, I thought, 'What fun it is. I could have all these adventures!' So it was really good."

Her adventures led her to Denmark for drum work with a frequent associate and Louisiana for some authentic Dixieland jamming (where her friends introduced her to that musical rubber chicken, which appears on the title track). But it was the Southwest—Arizona in particular—that inspired this record's theme.

Campbell had vacationed in the Copper State in December 2008, "but ended up staying for most of the year," she says. After becoming so accustomed to dreary U.K. winters and endless rain, she felt unprecedented joy and freedom in the desert.

"Every day, I’d be eating breakfast or having a cup of coffee, and there were these amazing hawks flying around," she says, still in awe. "I researched the Native American folklore about hawks, and it was really speaking to me. The things I’d been going through, the symbolism and, also, because I’m like an old lady—I’ve been in the music business for so long, sometimes I feel like a complete whore, a complete prostitute. So it’s a statement in that sense, too. Hawk—sometimes, I’m so tired of hawking my wares…and just the fact that I was flying everywhere in this big metal airplane, it felt really right to me."

From there, the new songs flowed. She went to Los Angeles and recorded with Lanegan and her engineering team in a Los Feliz barn. Campbell also made a pilgrimage to Joshua Tree to work with Americana goddess Victoria Williams. Williams educated her further on hymns and rootsy tomes. Though none of their duets made it onto Hawk, they might become b-sides or appear on Williams' next record, which Campbell is producing.

The blond voyager is looking forward to touring with Lanegan and Mason this fall, and the live show is taking her to familiar territory: England's All Tomorrow's Parties in December, curated by Belle & Sebastian. Campbell wore many hats in that heralded indie band for six years, and now recollects that tenure warmly.

"Chris (Geddes), the keyboard player, we’re often in touch," she says. "But seriously, over the last two years, the longest I’ve been home is two months...so we’re kind of like ships in the night. Enough time has gone past now that I look back on it fondly. And I want to say that if I hadn’t been known in that group, I probably would have been one of their crazy fans."

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Isobel Campbell MySpace page

Vanguard Records