Singer/songwriter Andrea von Kampen is deeply influenced by the Great Plains of her youth. The landscapes of her home state of Nebraska both inform and inspire her music, including songs on the record she released this spring, Sister Moon. This third full-album release was shaped by literature, spirituality, and standing in awe of Mother Earth.
“It is loosely based on Richard Powers' book, The Overstory, and features themes of nature, climate change and mysticism,” von Kampen said. The novel tells the stories of nine people interacting intensely with trees and fighting to keep our earth green.
She grew up in a place usually associated with notions of flatness and emptiness in popular culture, but Nebraska is the state where Arbor Day was founded. Von Kampen grew up with 100-year-old cottonwood trees in her backyard, and her nostalgic connection to those trees partially fueled her interest in preserving forests for the future.
Von Kampen said the new record will seem familiar to her fans. It’s her, but even more evolved.
“This album feels like my most cohesive work, but it still has the folk and acoustic sounds that I am drawn to,” she said.
At around the same time, she was inspired by The Overstory, and von Kampen was also delving into “Franciscan mysticism.” The story of 12th-century friar and mystic St. Francis of Assisi also fed the themes of her songwriting. A Catholic saint known for his ability to connect with animals and nature, “the alternative orthodoxy” of St. Francis affected her, allowing for “an entirely new way of seeing Christianity.”
Such complex themes – plus an introspective bent – appear to be par for the course for von Kampen, and that depth did not go unnoticed; it propelled her music into the film industry.
“My friend Alexander was working on his first full-length feature film script and asked if I would write the music,” she explained. “I was thrilled to be able to collaborate in that way.”
The film was the 2022 indie flick A Chance Encounter. She contributed to the soundtrack and made her acting debut onscreen. “I love films and television, so writing for something like that was a dream of mine,” von Kampen explained. “Seeing the film take off and have people from all over the world reach out about it has been pretty surreal. I have a hard time watching myself on screen, but I’m proud of what our scrappy team accomplished.”
Von Kampen has had her heart nestled in music for years. She found her passion—storytelling via sound—during childhood.
“I always felt pretty strongly that I wanted to tell stories for a living,” she said. “I spent a lot of my childhood putting on shows of all sorts, and it was really when I got a guitar and started learning other people’s songs that I realized this was a medium in which I could make art and tell stories. It was clear that the covering of songs would only take me so far if I wanted to be an artist, so I began to write my own music in college.”
She’s performed at events, including The Newport Folk Festival and Rocky Mountain Folks Festival. With three albums and five EPs under her belt, this singer/songwriter is still going strong, doing precisely what she loves.
“There will be an ‘Our Vinyl’ session coming out this summer, and some other exciting releases I can’t share quite yet,” she said. “I just wrapped my four-week North American tour but should have more dates coming out soon…so keep an eye out.”
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