Ask the Author: David Kamp
Answered Questions (5)
David Kamp
Last year (2019), I was privileged to see songs that I had co-written (with an amazing young composer named Benjamin Velez) performed professionally for the first time, in the Berkeley Rep and La Jolla Playhouse productions of a new musical we have co-written with John Leguizamo and Tony Taccone called “Kiss My Aztec!” (It’s a “Spamalot”-style broad comedy set in the Aztec empire at the time of the Spanish conquest, but it’s also quite politically pointed.) We are currently retooling the show to make it even better for the long run (you can guess what that means), and now I have the bug to do more shows, which I’ll tell you about when I’m able. The arduous task of writing lyrics—versus prose, my longtime gig—has heightened my admiration for those who have done it for years at the highest level. So I have persuaded Simon & Schuster to let me write a book called “Words By,” in which I pester some major songwriters and lyricists to explain to me how they’ve achieved transcendence. So far, I’ve been fortunate to interview Bruce Springsteen, Bernie Taupin, Aimee Mann, Robbie Robertson, and Eddie Holland (the wordsmith of the Motown team Holland-Dozier-Holland), among others, with more to come.
David Kamp
This will sound like a tautology, but: Writing for a living! Growing up middle-class in central New Jersey, I believed “writer” to be a path unavailable to me—something for smarter, wealthier, more interesting people. But I basically stumbled, by feel and instinct, into a writing career. And I’ve never taken it for granted. It’s amazing to write for a living, to skitter along the edges of 9-to-5 society, doing one’s own thing: nonfiction, fiction, lyrics for a musical. What you didn’t ask, Goodreads, is what the downside is, which is that there’s never truly a day off, and one lives with a constant nagging voice that says, “You should be working on that book/article/song, not watching old Roosevelt Franklin clips on YouTube.” But this is a good life, and I know it.
David Kamp
By having the common sense to say “Sitting here trying to force things won’t help.” My friend Ben Schott, who wrote the “Schott’s Miscellany” books and also dared to revive Bertie Wooster for the novel “Jeeves and the King of Clubs,” imparted some good advice: take in some quiet, contemplative culture... a wall-full of paintings in an art museum, a photo exhibition, a walk through the woods, or a botanical garden, or a park. That may sound unbearably twee, but I assure you: it’s *helpfully* twee. And restorative.
David Kamp
Don’t wait. Don’t think you’re unworthy. I thought these things for far too long before letting go and banishing (to some degree) the fear that whatever I attempt to do will turn out terribly. Lighter version of this answer: Don’t be afraid to hum aloud the goofy, self-invented melody in your head.
David Kamp
It occurred to me that no one had ever considered the late 60s/early 70s explosion of enlightened children’s TV—e.g., “Sesame Street,” “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” “The Electric Company,” “Zoom,” “Schoolhouse Rock,” and “Free to Be... You and Me”—as a SOCIAL MOVEMENT. Which it very much was. So I decided to write a fun, lively history of this movement. I also hope, if I may be earnest here, that the book offers an aspirational model in our own strained times for how collective good gets done even in difficult times. ’Cause that era was pretty crazy, too.
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