DECATUR, Ala. - Kate Campbell's life experiences are woven into every song she writes and every tune she sings.
She spent her childhood in the Mississippi Delta town of Sledge as the daughter of a Baptist preacher.
Her high-school years were more urban: Nashville and Orlando. Then she came to Alabama for college, earning a bachelor's in history from Samford University in Birmingham, then a master's degree in Southern history from Auburn University with Wayne Flynt as her major professor.
It's not surprising that singer Campbell's sound is as varied as her background.
Campbell, who was in Decatur this week for a Year of Alabama Arts performance, also agreed to lead a free professional development workshop for teachers, joined by Flynt, and a songwriting session for Decatur City Schools International Baccalaureate program and choral students.
Not every student gets her professor to join her on the road. But Flynt, a well-known Alabama historian, author, minister and activist, and Campbell are collaborating on a January series at Samford University.
He will talk about race, religion and a sense of place, and she will sing songs she has written on those themes.
He has kind of been my mentor, Campbell said of Flynt, a retired Auburn professor who loves music as well as history. When I started putting together my love of Southern history with my songwriting and music, people started paying attention, and everything made sense to me.
I found my own voice, and he was a part of that.
Campbell, 45, said in a telephone interview that she was considered a late bloomer in the music world.
I've been writing songs since I was a little girl, but I got married, worked on a Ph.
D. for a while, did some college teaching, and then things started coming together for recordings.
Campbell, who is married to a chaplain and lives in Nashville between singing engagements, said audiences responded well, so for the past 10 years she has focused on recording and performing, as well as writing.
When she was younger, Campbell said she was inspired by Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris.
They don't do the same type of music, but they are terrific models for women.
Southern writers - especially Eudora Welty and Flannery OConnor - also provided much of her inspiration.
But Campbell's Mississippi Delta childhood also plays a big part in her music.
To me, the South is a combination of blues and gospel and country music. It all comes from the South - I think that's what the South has given the world - and it's that combination that you hear in a lot of my music, she said.
There's some Southern rock, rhythm and blues and soul mixed in, along with a bit of Elvis, another of her loves, but when you look for her CDs in a music store, better check the folk music category.
As a child in the 1960s in the Delta, she had to reconcile a lot of images I didn't understand.
I think history has given me a way to talk about that, she said, and her music includes civil rights history and songs about the South.
I think it's a continuing dialogue, and now everything is global, Campbell said. As things change, the South is in a unique position to dialogue about this, and I think we should be.
She finds it interesting that the largest market for her music is the Northeast, not the South.
I think it's because I'm a white Southerner, and they haven't heard many white folks from the South who are willing to talk about these things.
One of her performances was at the Southern Poverty Law Center and Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery.
She describes her work as eclectic, while storytelling is her style.
Campbell's CDs since 1995 include Songs from the Levee, Moonpie Dreams, Visions of Plenty, Rosaryville, Wandering Strange, Monuments and Blues and Lamentations.
Her most recent CD, For the Living of These Days, reflects her spiritual nature and was recorded at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals as Lent began. Spooner Oldham of Rogersville is the other musician on the CD, which features new songs written by Campbell, Oldham, Mark Narmore and Walt Aldridge, plus Jesus Christ written by Woody Guthrie and Kris Kristofferson's They Killed Him.
It includes If I Ever Get to Heaven, a few hymns, a new Civil Rights Memorial song, and a prayer that she set to music: Prayer of Thomas Merton.
When writing songs, she reflects on Jesus' words about how people should treat one another. When choosing songs for her latest album, she returned to her favorite sources: the record collection of her parents, the Rev.
Jim and Jeanette Henry, now retired and living in Orlando; the Baptist hymnal; classic folk, soul and country music; and Alabama songwriters.
Oldham is legendary for his work on many classic rhythm and blues songs. He wrote hits for stars as diverse as Percy Sledge and Barbra Streisand; he played organ on Sledge's When a Man Loves a Woman and Aretha Franklin's I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You and has played on nearly all of Campbell's albums.
Campbell usually plays guitar and piano onstage.
I love Southern rock and the music that came out of Muscle Shoals, said Campbell. And I love Elvis Presley - I have many tunes that mention him.
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I think it's interesting that she's as comfortable singing in a church or coffeehouse as in a theater or concert venue, said Lindy Ashwander, executive director for the Princess Theatre Center for the Performing Arts in Decatur.
Some of Campbell's winter concert settings include Vestavia Hills Baptist Church in Birmingham and churches in Massachusetts, Kentucky, Connecticut, California and Virginia, as well as a performance for the Alabama Historical Association, a library concert series in Hyde Park, N.Y., and an acoustic series in New England.
Former Decatur resident Lee Sentell, state tourism director, planned the Year of Alabama Arts (following years emphasizing the outdoors, food, and gardens). More than 600 events, from craft fairs, festivals and art strolls to plays and concerts, already are planned around the state for this joint venture between the tourism department and the Alabama State Council on the Arts.
Ashwander said Campbell's artist-in-residence events in Decatur were sponsored by Alabama Bureau of Tourism and Travel, with grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
To get copies of the Alabama Calendar of Events, Must-See Arts Destinations and 2007 Alabama Vacation Guide, call (800) Alabama or visit .
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