Fans of the late Guy Clark, and of top-notch acoustic Americana, rejoice! Shawn Camp, one of Guy’s long-time songwriting partners, has released a concept album of songs they wrote together over many years about the legendary Arkansas fiddler known as Sis Draper.
Guy Clark should need no introduction, as one of the best American songwriters ever in any genre. Shawn Camp is a bit less well known outside of Nashville and bluegrass circles. Arkansas born, Shawn has been writing songs in Nashville for many years now, where he’s also been an in demand player on guitar and other instruments, and for the past few years he’s been the singer with the bluegrass supergroup Earls of Leicester.
One of his pet projects over the years was the penning of songs with Clark about Sis Draper. Shawn was seven years old when the traveling fiddle player arrived at a pickin’ party in the hills of Perry County, Arkansas, where he lived. As the story goes, one day Guy and Shawn were looking for something to write a song about and Shawn told him about Sis. “Guy said, ‘Well, there’s your song,’” Camp says. “We wrote ‘Sis Draper’ that day.”
Over the years they often returned to the subject, and Clark released six of the songs himself over the years: “Sis Draper,” “Magnolia Wind,” “Soldier’s Joy 1864,” “Cornmeal Waltz,” “New Cut Road” (the only one Guy wrote alone), and “The Death of Sis Draper.” Another seven are appearing with them on this album for the first time: “The Fiddlin’ Preacher,” “Old Hillbilly Hand-Me-Down,” “The Checkered Shirt Band,” “Big Foot Stomp,” “Grandpa’s Rovin’ Ear,” “Hello Dyin’ Day,” and “The Ghost of Sis Draper.”
So one day in August 2024, Shawn gathered a bunch of top players at the Nashville studio known as Clement House. (It was formerly called the Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa by its owner, the infamous Cowboy Jack Clement, who got his first job in the music business from Sam Philips at Sun Records in Memphis.) Along for the ride were Arkansas fiddler Tim Crouch and Shawn on guitar and vocals, supported by Mike Bub on bass, Chris Henry on mandolin, Jimmy Stewart on dobro and Cory Walker on banjo. Verlon Thompson, another of Guy’s longtime collaborators, sings harmony on “Old Hillbilly Hand-Me-Down.” They recorded it all, live, in one day.
Concept albums can get ponderous or portentous or just plain pretentious, but The Ghost of Sis Draper is none of those things. On top of the unparalleled songwriting from Guy and Shawn, the album has great production and arrangements and vibrant performances from all involved. Fiddler Tim Crouch is the connective tissue here, sprinkling bits of oldtime tunes appropriately throughout: snippets of “Soldier’s Joy” in “Soldier’s Joy 1864,” the tune of “The Arkansas Traveller” in “Sis Draper,” etc.
“Cornmeal Waltz” makes me long to get back on the dance floor; “The Fiddlin’ Preacher” makes me thirsty for some moonshine, and “Grandpa’s Rovin’ Ear” just makes me chuckle with its tale of an old fella who doesn’t go for other women but ignites his wife’s jealousy with his love of Sis Draper’s fiddling. That motif takes a dark turn in the two-part ballad “The Death of Sis Draper,” and the haunting “Hello Dyin’ Day,” as another woman acts on her jealousy for the lusty fiddler. But she, and Guy Clark, live on in this music.
(Truly Handmade Records, 2025)
