as seen on Hear Nebraska
Cameron McGill’s new LP, Is a Beast, began when he picked up an old acoustic guitar at his girlfriend’s apartment. It was her late grandfather’s and hadn’t been played for 20 or 30 years, he says. With the original strings intact, he began writing songs as his girlfriend shared stories of the man to whom the guitar had once belonged.
“It had an eerie quality,” McGill says. “In some ways it seemed to cast a shadow, maybe, over the light in which those songs were written.”
Cameron McGill & What Army is on tour supporiting the album and will stop at the Bourbon Theatre at 9 p.m. Thursday, April 7 in Lincoln as a part of a KRNU benefit show with The Betties, Life of a Scarecrow, Masses and Show is the Rainbow. You can catch them a week later at the Barley St. Tavern at 9 p.m. Thursday, April 14 in Omaha with openers Bryan Rogers and Manny Coon.
I caught up with McGill while he took a break in a tour bus stopped in St. Louis.
Bus engine off, he’s able to catch some time to hear himself think so he can work for a few hours, he says, while out on tour with Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s. With a forthcoming album under his main project, Cameron McGill & What Army, he has some pre-release work to hash out.
“This release has definitely had the most kind of set-up and promotion than any of my past records,” he says of the LP, due out physically April 12.
Since joining up with Margot in 2009 as the band’s keyboardist, a break from one band means time for the other, especially when you’re touring about seven months out of the year between the Chicago groups.
Or at least, that’s how it’s shaped up for McGill as he prepares to self-release his fifth studio album. Is A Beast is currently available for purchase on iTunes as well as for online streaming. The album holds McGill’s singer-songwriter sound while expanding upon the band’s music, lending to a nice mix of folk and rock.
Is A Beast by CameronMcGill&WhatArmy
