Kicking drugs after 15 years was a mixed blessing for BC Camplight’s Brian Christinzio. On the one end, it served as a catalyst for the rampant creativity and pained grandeur of A Sober Conversation (Bella Union). On the other, a clear head forced Christinzio to confront some lingering demons. BC Camplight’s seventh album meanders its way through the last two years of Christinzio’s life, a period punctuated by his embracing sobriety and coming to terms with childhood sexual abuse.
Raised in New Jersey, Christinzio launched his solo career in Philadelphia in the early 2000s. He made a pair of albums there—the first, Hide Run Away, with future members of the War On Drugs. After a harrowing deportation drama, he’s now legally settled in Manchester, England, and involved in a healthy relationship with a partner who “doesn’t suffer fools gladly.”
MAGNET’s Hobart Rowland caught up with Christinzio.
How has getting sober and coming to terms with the past trauma in your personal life impacted you as an artist?
People often talk about the clarity sobriety brings. This is true, but most don’t mention that you may also have a renewed and clear view of things you’ve been hiding from. Once the cobwebs blew off, I was left to sit in this childhood event (Christinzio was abused by an adult camp counselor) for months, recalling lost pieces of memory here and there. I never had any illusions that writing a record from a seemingly horrific perspective would be cathartic for me—that’s not why I did it. I made this record because these songs were the most important things I had to say. It’s my attempt to understand a part of myself that had, up until now, been a stranger to me. I could’ve made a more of radio-friendly record or something I knew wouldn’t scare people off. But frankly, fuck that. I know that when I write from a place of truth, the songs essentially take care of themselves and the creativity need not be manufactured.
What finally prompted you to confront what happened?
I had cryptically referenced the event a few times on previous albums. Whenever I sang those songs live, I felt like I was doing a disservice to the audience—like I wasn’t being honest with them. I never really dove in before because I’d spend Thursday to Saturday higher than a Mississippi pine, then recover for a few days, have a couple days of trying to manage my relationships and life, then it would be Thursday again. I lived in a near-constant haze. I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to deal with something like this.
I was still using when my partner of nine years left me in 2022. Something happened in the spring of 2023, when I met my current partner, Jessica. For reasons I’m sure will unfurl for me someday, I just stopped cold turkey on my birthday, May 31, 2023. Maybe it’s because I regretted not being open about my addiction to my previous partner. Maybe it’s because Jess is so interested in psychology and mental health. Whatever it was, I felt ready to grow from my mistakes. Once my brain was no longer in emergency mode 24/7, I gradually felt more capable of dealing with it.
You played everything on A Sober Conversation except for drums. Take us through the recording process.
I can be a goddamn maniac in the studio—it’s all pretty manic. My whole world, for better or worse, becomes the musical universe I’m trying to bring to life. I don’t work well in the traditional setting of booking out a studio for three weeks and working nine to five; I’m not a Tin Pan Alley kind of guy. Some days, I want to be at the piano for 14 hours reworking string arrangements or fixing a bridge. Other days, I might get overwhelmed and tell the engineer I’m disappearing for a couple days. I work in a place called Whitewood Studio in Liverpool. The engineer/owner there, Danny Woodward, has been my right-hand dude for eight years. He knows I’m a little bonkers, and he knows when I need reeling in. He’s gracious and flexible with his scheduling. I wouldn’t be getting that anywhere else.
Practically speaking, this album was recorded much rawer. There are hardly any click tracks, and the drums and piano are performed together in the same room. It’s less clinical and clean than my previous records—perhaps less playful. It may sound pretentious—and it probably is—but each day it felt like we were doing something important. Danny and I would often listen back at the end of the day, look at each other with lifted eyebrows, and say, “Woah.” More than a couple times, we found ourselves saying, “OK, we can’t fuck this up.”
What was it like working with Abigail Morris on “Two Legged Dog”?
I hardly ever collaborate. I’ve always been precious about my music, and it’s actually something I don’t love about myself … like, “Chill out Brian, you’re not Picasso.” After I wrote “Two-Legged Dog,” I had a singer in mind to do the female parts. This fell through literally the day before it needed to be recorded. I was a little pissed off but determined to go big and make the song even better than I’d previously imagined. I sat down with a coffee and tried to think of the best fit. It crossed my mind that the Last Dinner Party are fans of mine. Some of the girls came to watch me at Glastonbury last year. On a whim, I text Abigail and basically said, “This has to be done immediately, I don’t expect you to say yes but figured I’d ask.” She wrote back, “OMG yes.” Then I sang her parts to tape and sent her the track. She had the song back to me the next morning, along with all the wonderful adlibs she does on the record. What she added was way better than what was in my head. It just feels so alive. It taught me a lesson about being so precious.
While the basic subject matter may be harrowing, there’s also some humor that finds its way onto A Sober Conversation. Would you expand on the album’s tragic-comic vibe?
I get a little bored singing sad-sounding songs about sad things using sad words sung from an obviously sad man. Once you show the listener that the music is coming from a holistic place, a place where it’s OK to laugh at the pain, then the music touches more closely to the actual human experience. Perhaps this is an odd example, but there’s a scene in Planes, Trains And Automobiles where John Candy defends his goofy characteristics to Steve Martin, who’d just berated him. He says, “I like me.” It’s one of the most heartbreaking moments in movies to me. It’s so effective because we’d already seen Candy’s character being utterly hilarious and vulnerable in the film. He felt human. He wasn’t just a sad man. I guess that’s what I try to do in music. If nothing else, I’d like to be remembered as this generation’s Del Griffith.
See BC Camplight live.
