WANT SOME GOOD FUNNY MUSIC? HEAD WEST

by Donald Wilcock

The Record, Troy, NY

January 26, 1996

Robin Williams is one of Camille West's heroes, but in talking to this humorous regional singer/songwriter, I find her to be more grounded than her famous mentor.
        "Thank you," says the "Suburban Mother from Hell," who performs Friday night at the Eighth Step in Albany. "I don't think anyone has ever told me I was grounded before. Certainly not my children or my husband.
        " Unlike Williams, West doesn't disappear into the many characters of her songs In casual conversation. "Tish Happens" in her song "I'm Dyslexic."
        On "Root Canal of the Heart," her dentist can't understand her declarations of love because his fingers are in her mouth.
        But even though Camille West is a character even when she's out of character, there is no mistaking that here is a mother who increasingly is putting her writing first as her two children get older.
        And humor is merely the vehicle she's chosen to exercise her muse.
        "Why humor? I like humor," she declares, "It's a trip making people laugh. When it works, it's wonderful. It's the biggest high. The greatest thing in the whole world is to hear a whole, big roomful of people laugh."
        A woman came up to her recently and bought a couple of her "Mother Tongue" albums, one for a friend who had cancer. "I'm giving it to her along with a Marx Brothers film and Norman Cousins' book 'Anatomy of An Illness'," the woman explained. "She has cancer, and I'd really like her to laugh her way out of this."
        "I'm not saying (my CD) cures cancer," explains West, "But that was the sweetest thing, and she's right about laughter being (therapeutic)."
        The Queensbury mother of two boys was Lena Spencer's last find before she died in 1989. And West's husband, Scott, was the one who came up with the idea of the folkathon, the annual 'round-the-clock marathon that raises money for the Caffé Lena, America's oldest coffeehouse.
        "I miss her terribly," says West about Spencer.
        "Sometimes I go to the Caffé and I almost expect her to be sitting in a particular chair or expect her to be right by the window, the last place I saw her, I feel there are ghosts that are good ghosts."
        Calling Camille West's house is like dropping a Scud missile into a dust bin. Three different people pick up various extensions, and Camille calmly tells each: "I've got it. Thank you! Jason? Please hang up! Goodbye!! Jason, goodbye!!!!" Then, there's a pause to collect herself and a simple "Hello."
        For more than six years, West has juggled her career around the school-bus schedule. As her children progress into their teens, she, much as Hank Ketchum with "Dennis the Menace," draws on family experiences for her inspiration.
        "I have a real funny family, and we just say things. Things come out in the course of a conversation that are so wonderful that they have to be written down."
        The title of "Mother Tongue" is a compendium of clichés mothers endlessly throw at their children from "Take off your muddy shoes" to "Here's a tissue. Blow your nose." And the rationale behind the scoldings? "Because I'm your mother, that's why."
        But increasingly her music is stepping outside the exasperated-mother-role. In "It's Hell to Be Psychic," she's a seer who can't find her car keys. "Candidate's Wife's Rag" bemoans the idea that her politician husband gets "four to eight, but I get life."
        "Mother Tongue" is so full of one-liners and visual send ups, it's easy to forget there's some smart arranging and damn fine picking going on here.
        I've said so many positive things about producer Tony Markellis, he's going to have to start paying me press-agent fees, but the fact is this man, easily the best and best- liked bass player in folk, knows how to showcase raw talent with a plethora of sidemen and women who season the artist's presentation.
        While there is the danger that his arrangements here may threaten to overshadow West's singing, the material is so strong, it never happens.
        Nevertheless, there are 13 musicians on "The Viennese Drinking Song" alone. The instruments range from tubas and clarinets to a dentist's drill and mouth suction device, with the entire album bookended by lines from "Auld Lange Syne."
        Bridget Ball, Christopher Shaw, Joan Crane, Tony Trischka, Jay Unger and Molly Mason and Peter "Madcat" Ruth are only a partial list of musicians who add their touch to arrangements that cover the spectrum from blues and rags to fiddle tunes.
        "That was all the magic of Tony Markellis," says West. "I got some wonderful people singing on it, Tony Trischka, Jay Unger. I couldn't believe it.
        "He's given me these names. How about on this one? Would you like Tony Trischka to play banjo for you?" She draws in her breath as if to steady herself. "What? Yes! Sure! I'm gonna say no?"
        It's West's second album, although she would like not to acknowledge her first. "We did the ritual burying in the backyard of the first one," she groans.
        This album is the latest in a series of steps that have seen her showcase at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in '93 only to become a featured artist in '94.
        She performs now almost every weekend from Maine to New Jersey, where they particularly like her jibes and digs at their state. Two weekends ago, she sang at The Funny Songwriters Festival in Somerville, Mass., with her friends Peter and Lou Berryman.
        One song on "Mother Tongue," "Save The Snail," is about a group of do-gooders who want to liberate a factory full of snails before they're killed in the name of fine cuisine. The song, which sounds like it was recorded on the French Riviera, ends with the line: "but the escar wouldn't go."
        "That started with a conversation around a table with some good friends of ours," she explains. "I'm still not convinced this thing happened.
        "I'm told 'Snails' is a true story, that people actually did break into the escargot factory to save the snails, but of course I'm a very gullible person. And my friends know that."