Double Identity: Mark Camp Ranges from Country Swing Cowboy to Rock Regenerator

Sept. 1, 2004

Mark Camp has the best of two musical worlds. As the singer/guitarist with the Farm and Orchard Time band, he plays country-western tunes by the likes of Bob Wills and Hank Williams. On the other hand, his Deadly Sins band specializes in three-chord hard rock anthems from the days of the MC5, Stooges and Ramones.
Sometimes you can catch Camp’s musically-schizophrenic divide on opposite nights, with Farm & Orchard Time playing Poppycock’s in Traverse City and the Deadly Sins packing dance floors at local rock clubs.
Why the parallel universe?
“It has to do with my background,” says Camp. “I grew up in a small farm town in mid-Michigan and lost the use of my right eye when I was 15 as the result of an injury. I had to stay quiet for months while it was healing and I started playing guitar for something to do. I fell in love with Elvis Costello, the Ramones and bands from that era that you didn’t hear much on the radio. Punk pop bands like Devo, but also the older groups like the Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground and the Stooges.”
Camp, 36, also felt the gravitational pull of old-time country music.
“I grew up around country music. My grandparents were farmers and we went to a little country church. My mom had me and my sister onstage since the time we could sing a note.”

INCREDIBLE COUNTRY
Living in the farm town of Blanchard outside Mt. Pleasant, Camp says his mother was an “incredible singer” with a Tammy Wynette style. His family performed on a local “Hee-Haw” style TV show of comedy, singalongs and solo singers called “Country Capers” from 1972-’77.
It was an influence that came back to pleasantly haunt him years later when he was a rock musician making the long drive between Traverse City to gigs with The Dopes in Petoskey. “I’d listen to Hank Williams and Bob Wills on those drives and remember that I’d always liked that incredible country stuff,” he recalls.
As a member of the band Mondo Canè in Mt. Pleasant, his group was rivals with The Dopes, who were also just getting started at the time. Camp went on to join The Dopes in 1997, adding a country twist to some of the funk-rock band’s songs.
A carpenter by day, he was also a member of a number of other local rock groups through the ’90s, including Bucket, Loppsider and Breadfest.
Today, his Deadly Sins band includes James Hicks on drums and Kevin Gills on bass. Camp and Hicks’ musical association goes back to the age of 17 and they once barnstormed the midwest from Lincoln, Nebraska to Pittsburgh in a group. Gills easily rates as one of Northern Michigan’s best and most indispensable bassists, performing with The Dopes among other groups.
Farm & Orchard Time also features the creme de la creme of local music talent, albeit more in the acoustic realm, with Camp on guitar & cowboy hat, Thomas Loomis on bass, Pat Ivory on dobro/guitar and Don Julin on mandolin.

VIVE LA DIFFERENCE
Named after a WTCM-AM show that has been on the air for decades, Farm & Orchard Time plays way-back country, western and bluegrass by Wills, Williams, Johnny Cash, Hank Thompson and the Louvin Brothers.
“I also write tunes in that genre,” Camp says. “I like ragtime stuff, straight-up country and swinging music. I love music influenced by black culture that kind of jumps and you can hear some of that in swing music. I’ve been steadily writing songs since I was 15 -- it’s not something I can shut off.”
Atmosphere is a big part of the band’s appeal.
“It’s definitely very honky-tonkesque. A lot of the songs are about drinking and heartache, not necessarily in that order. There’s a feeling of that music of a community spirit from the ’40s and ’50s that’s been lost. You get the feeling of a whole community coming together for a square dance.
“The family farm has changed so much over the past 50 years that sometimes when you’re playing that music you feel you’re bringing that old sense of community back to life,” he adds.

DEADLY SINS
For the full jolt, however, it’s Deadly Sins that delivers the voltage.
“We play very straightforward old school rock and punk by the Stooges, MC5, Ramones and Dead Boys. Most of it is from the mid-’80s or older. We do an obscure Who song and even “Dirty White Boy” by Foreigner ’cos it’s a great rock song.”
Camp says Deadly Sins is trying to fill an aching void in rock.
“It’s a reaction to the staleness and incomplete feel of modern rock radio. There’s nothing on the air that’s rebelling about anything -- you don’t hear much of that on modern rock radio. But that’s what rock is all about; even Elvis shaking his hips and pissing off parents -- that’s what rock is.
“I realized that if I wanted to hear that kind of music we’d have to play it ourselves to get that rush,” he adds. A lot of the music is appropriate to the times now, America is so divided. Change is in the air and anger is appropriate if it makes you change.”
So far, it’s been thumbs-up from appreciative audiences.
“We put out a 100% balls-out, sweaty, hard-driving show,” Camp says, just like the long-lost originals. “Part of the reason I had to do this band is that it’s a really strong outlet for any kind of emotions you have -- it’s a great way of exercising your anxiety.”