Campbell / Jensen is a new project from two musicians with a vast array of experience across the worlds of Americana, country, bluegrass, gypsy jazz and rock. Ashley Campbell is an acclaimed solo artist whose music has taken her all over the world, including supporting Kris Kristofferson and The Bellamy Brothers, and she has also performed in her father Glen Campbell’s band and appeared in the video for Rascal Flatts’ country smash ‘Banjo’. Meanwhile, Thor Jensen has toured as part of Hazmat Modine and in Stephane Wrembel’s band, as well as opening for Dr. Dog and Portugal. The Man as a member of Quiet Life.

Recently, Campbell/Jensen released their debut album, Turtle Cottage via Vacancy Records featuring the singles P&P, A Song By Vampires, For Vampires and the new single Run With You.

The breathtakingly beautiful album was recorded in a holiday home called Turtle Cottage in Mahee Island, near Comber in Northern Ireland in January 2023 that the pair rented for that purpose.

From the beginning to the end of the album, Campebell/Jensen take you on an emotional and powerful journey of stunning instrumentals and gorgeous vocals and harmonies. The album is a cinematic, picturesque spectacle that you won’t want to end! A blend of genres, the pair invite us into a world of traditional music with a slight modern take.

The roots behind the project go back to childhood, when Ashley grew up listening to the gypsy jazz of Django Reinhardt that her dad loved so much. Years later she decided she wanted to learn how to play in that style, and was introduced to Thor, who could teach her and had just moved to Nashville a week beforehand. That was in September 2021, but they enjoyed collaborating together so much that they started playing duo shows the following May – one of their earliest being a UK tour supporting ‘Wichita Lineman’ legend Jimmy Webb before continuing with further gigs in both the UK and US.W

We caught up with Ashley Campbell and Thor Jensen to discuss the album Turtle Cottage, living in the UK, the tour and more!

Campbell/Jensen are still on tour so grab tickets and see them whilst you can, it will be a beautiful experience! Tickets here

NOVEMBER
3rd – Edinburgh, The Voodoo Rooms
6th – London, St. Pancras Old Church
9th – Brighton, Mid-Sussex Music Hall
11th – Huddersfield, The North Light Gallery (special guests to The Kruger Brothers)
12th – Birmingham, Kitchen Garden Cafe
15th – Bangor, The Court House
16th – Bangor, The Court House
17th – Galway, Monroe’s Live
18th – Letterkenny, The RCC
19th – Clonakilty, De Barra’s
21st – Dublin, The Ruby Sessions
22nd – Coolagarrantoe, Mitchelstown Cave (a Wilde Dining event)

FEBRUARY
7th – Barnoldswick, Music & Arts Centre
8th – Liverpool, Music Room
9th – Kirton, Diamond Jubilee Town Hall
10th – Newcastle, Cluny 2
16th – Twyford, St, Mary’s Church
17th – Ansford, Caryford Community Hall

Hi – How are you? You live in London now I hear? How is it?

Ashley – We Love It!

Thor – Oh it’s fantastic!

You have a great relationship with the UK and clearly that must have been a factor to moving here! What is it about the UK that prompted the move?

Ashley – Before I met Thor I had been coming over here for years. I just love it! I have been wanting to live over here for a while now! I just love the culture, the history. Coming from America where nothing is more than a hundred and something years old. I love the history here and the old buildings and everything.

Thor – I grew up in the North East of America, we do have a little bit of age compared to Arizona (Where Ashley is from) but being over here (in the UK) and seeing how deep the history goes. Also logistically speaking, it’s wonderful touring over here. The UK, compared to the United States is quite small. It’s far easier to get around!

Yeah because we can probably get from one end of the country to the other in about the same time that you can travel across one state?

Ashley- Oh yeah! A lot of States.

Thor – It’s pretty wild. We also have a really good reception with audiences over here so making the move over here was kind of a no brainer.

We are a listening crowd, we know albums back to front. We are very attentive.

Ashley- Yeah, it feels more like a music loving culture than what’s popular culture.

Exactly and you recently headlined the British Country Music Festival- What was that like?

Ashley- We had so much fun! It’s such a beautiful room to play in . They had all these pictures of what it was like during the big dance parties in the 30’s. It was just so grand and even without a microphone, your voice just carries in that hall and it was such a cool experience.

Thor – Yeah it was such a well put together festival. There wasn’t a single hick up the entire time, everyone just did a great job putting it together. A fantastic audience too, people just listened, as we just talked about, its just a good listening audience here.

You have a tour coming up too, do you have any favourite places to play? How do you choose where to play?

Ashley – Well a lot of places that turned out to be our favourites were ultimately chosen for us. We have a booking agent now but we do find ourselves returning to certain places, this one place in particular the Druidstone Hotel, which is out in Haverford West, South West Wales. It’s right on the edge of a beautiful sea cliff and this will be our third time going back in November. We just love it!

Sounds beautiful and you have definitely seen more of England and Wales than I have! One place that I actually still have never been to is Ireland. You recorded the new album there! That, I believe was recorded on a private Island in Ireland?

Thor – Yeah, it was recorded on this tiny island in a nature reserve in Northern Ireland. It was an unbelievably gorgeous place with otters on the coast and beautiful big birds landing. It has such a rich history with the family that own the house . We chose well, we surrounded ourselves with somewhere beautiful to record.

I had a nose at the pictures on air b&b and it looked amazing inside and out and very old fashioned. You recorded some of it by the wood burned fire?

Thor – We recorded all of it there!

Ashley – That was the only place we could stay warm haha!

It must have been peaceful!

Ashley – It really was specially and you would think that January in Northern Ireland would be very grey and gloomy but it was actually, most days so vividly clear and bright. It was just so crisp and clean, it was like the whole world was in 4k.

I saw on instagram about the wild Hare that came to visit every morning!

Ashley – Oh yeah haha! He would come and check out what we were doing and then would catch us looking at him and run off haha!

Tell us a bit about the album – was there a particular song that took the longest to write, the hardest to write? Did it all run smoothly?

Thor – I don’t know what the hardest to write was, maybe Vampires (A song by Vampires for Vampires)

Ashley – Yeah! None of them were like a real struggle they just happened naturally.

Thor – Yeah, we really lucked out or maybe we just write that well together haha. Every time we sit down and write, we basically would finish a song every session. In my experience it was sort of miraculous. Nothing felt phoned in ever you know? It really worked itself out really well. I think that maybe the instrumental pieces, they proved to be a bit difficult.

Ashley – Yeah it was like putting together a puzzle

Thor – and also just to write the notes was one thing but we didn’t really pull any punches with those instrumentals so to actually be able to nail the performances of them, that was a bit of a challenge.

Ashley – that was hardest part haha

Thor – still is, they are wonderfully difficult!

I was going to ask about that because listening to the instrumentals which are really beautiful by the way, I thought it must be harder to remember notation than lyrics? I could of course be very wrong about that?

Thor – to a certain extent there is some difficulty there. The beauty of the lyrics is that you say it once and clearly that is going to indicate what the next sentence is.

Ashley- it’s funny because in my mind it has always been more melodically, I have a more melodic memory than I do lyrical. If I like a song I will listen to it a hundred times and still not know all the lyrics to it. My brain focuses more in the musical queues. It’s funny how it works.

Have the owners Turtle Cottage had the album?

Ashley – Not yet! We have this artist friend who does wood block prints, she carves them by hand. We worked with her and she made an original Turtle Cottage Campbell/Jensen poster, so we have got those currently in customs waiting to come to us. They are original wood block prints so we are going to gift the owners one of those.

I have been listening to the album and I love it and my favourite is bound to change as always does but so far I am loving the instrumentals and Ashley you make the Banjo sound so easy to play but I know it isn’t. Did you pick it up easily? How long did it take you to get to that level of expertise?

Ashley – Haha! I wouldn’t say I was an expert but I have a very non- technical relationship with the banjo. I mostly do it by ear and kind of intuition and I definitely write my parts so it’s not just coming off the top of my head. I wish it was, I wish I was that good haha! It’s work but it’s a connection too!

One of my favourite songs on the album so far is ‘If I’m Gonna Live a Long Time’ – I love how country sounding that song is!

Thor – That was one that I started, it was honestly out of a desire to, honestly more of a stylistic guitar thing. It’s a certain style that I’m not really necessarily prone to. I got into listening to certain people and I thought how cool it would be to write something that was like that. Rather than take the time to learn someone else’s song, it just felt a little bit more fun to start something of our own. I like to give credit to Leon Redbone who we are both really big fans of. He came about in the 70’s and he played old Tin Pan Alley music and phenomenal guitars. A lot of that old style rag-time guitar.

What was the first song that you wrote together?

Thor – Oh that’s easy that’s the first track on the album – P&P

Oh nice! What does that stand for?

Both laugh

Thor – It’s a mystery

Ashley – It’s a mystery yeah haha

Thor – Honestly it started as a playful lyric.

Ashley – and now it’s kind of an inside joke that we left it P&P. I will say that it’s very immature haha!

See I thought it was postage and packaging haha

Thor – Haha oh no! When we wrote that song we had covid together, two Christmases ago. We were quarantined in my apartment and this was before we even started to form a group, we just decided to write a song.

Ashley- Yeah we decided to write a song. He (Thor) was playing a variation of a Django Reinhardt song and I started singing something over it and we were kind of inspired by that.

Well I am sorry to hear that you both had covid, I hope it wasn’t too bad?

Ashley – Awful!

Thor – It was terrible!

Ashley – Ours was that bad strain of December 2021 with the omicron surge and everyone had it. It was just a very very bad flu, we did not feel well at all.

It seems like a life time ago now. Not being able to go to concerts for us reviewers and fans was really difficult but it must have been harder for artists?

Thor – It feels like a lifetime ago but it also feels like yesterday!

Ashley – A nightmare ago!

How did you keep yourselves occupied not being able to play live music?

Thor – I practiced and got really good at cooking rice?

Oh really?

Ashley- I started doing live streams from my house which I am still doing now!

Rice is weirdly hard to get completely right haha

Thor – That was the beauty of instagram, somebody I followed made this rice dish and I was like “that looks great” and so I went and bought a 25 pound bag of rice and I made rice everyday! Haha!

Ashley – I had to eat rice every day haha

Brilliant! What song are you most excited for people to hear from the album?

Thor – Well I think we are both in the contentious that our favourite song on the record is ‘Perfectly Alright’. That was just like a beautiful song to write. The thing with the record is that we did the whole thing, just the two of us – two voices, two instruments and it was clear that a third harmony part would be beautiful in that song! So rather than we could have recorded it ourselves with magic technology, it would have been a little bit truer to the whole feeling of the record to have a third person come in and sing the part. So we reached out to this amazing singer that we became friends with called Rachel Grace who lives in Wexford, Ireland and so she came up for the day and recorded the third part and nailed it unbelievably, perfectly! It just ended up being a very special recording.

Did you record everything on the album in one take?

Thor – No, we did several takes!

Ashley – We did several takes but that one we did sing all together at the same time, it wasn’t like Thor songs it and then I sing it, we did that one as a group which was really cool.

The album artwork for the singles that are popping up on instagram are really interesting of food on plates and then empty plates with crumbs haha! Is there a meaning behind that?

Ashley- Haha! We had this little disposable film camera that we took pictures throughout the recording process and we had these funny little grainy pictures of some of the meals that we had eaten and they just seemed like the perfect little sequence of single art to use.

It’s certainly interesting and caught my attention.

Both laugh!

Thank you so much for talking today and we hope to see you soon!