Daily Discovery: Jeff Campbell, “Steal Your Car”

Updated:

June 12, 2014 4:14 pm

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ARTIST: Jeff Campbell

SONG: “Steal Your Car“

BIRTHDATE: 9/7/79

HOMETOWN: Philadelphia

CURRENT LOCATION: San Francisco

AMBITIONS: to tour for a living and support the needs of a 4-5 piece band so that we’re all making a decent living playing original music.

TURN-OFFS: Entitlement

TURN-ONS: Hard, smart work and it’s payoff

DREAM GIG: The Electric Factory in Philadelphia to a sold out crowd of family, friends and lots of people I don’t know that know all the words.

FAVORITE LYRIC: “Sometimes I feel I’m getting stuck between the handshake and the f***”.

CRAZIEST PERSON I KNOW: Chuck Prophet

SONG I WISH I WROTE: Every Breath You Take, but only so I could give Andy Summers his money.

5 PEOPLE I’D MOST LIKE TO HAVE DINNER WITH: Paul McCartney, Brendan O’Brien, Derek Sivers and my Parents.

MY FAVORITE CONCERT EXPERIENCE: My dad got he and I front row tickets to see Metallica on the Black Album tour in 1992. He wouldn’t let me go alone b/c I was only 12. I’ve probably seen 400 shows since then and it’s still the best musical and overall hangout experience I’ve ever had.

I WROTE THIS SONG: Steal Your Car: this is a tune I wrote while eavesdropping on 2 others at a bar at LAX airport. The one guy was trying to talk the other guy out of throwing everything he could fit into his car and driving off someplace else to be someone else/start over – bad islet run away from their problems. His logic was that he had done it, that he’s still running and that he knows now that it would have been better to just face them head on. The part that grabbed me as a writer is that he said that he stole his now ex wife’s car to run from her and that he did a little time for it. They clearly didn’t know that there was a guy sitting next to them taking notes.