Bill Campbell is a fingerstyle guitarist whose specialty is Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar instrumentals, or ki ho'alu. He is an accomplished musician who plays several instruments, including guitar, piano, piano accordion, and saxophone. His first CD, 'Kauai On My Mind', is a collection of slack key guitar solos that includes a nice mix of 18 Hawaiian contemporary and standard tunes, popular standards, and original compositions. He has performed in Hawaii and in his home state of Virginia. He has written slack key arrangements for over 300 songs, and he continues to embellish his unique style of playing.
"Bill Campbell heard ki ho'alu while visiting in 1996, borrowed a guitar and worked out the basics with the help of a friend's Dancing Cat CDs before finding a teacher. His solo album is thus an inspiration to all who study slack key. It is also soothing instrumental mood music in its own right. Campbell keeps to back-porch style -- a single six-string guitar played in clean "taro patch" tuning. He includes enough standards for slack-key mavens to appraise his approach, but the originals and non-Hawaiian songs are interesting as well. Hearing pop and Broadway hits reworked in pure acoustic arrangements places the melodies and the ki ho'alu tradition alike in a fresh context." - - - John Berger, Honolulu Star-Bulletin | ||
"There are so many great songs in the world, and most musicians are afraid to touch them. Campbell's approach is simple, we get to hear a slack-key version of a song we might be familiar with, but through his hands it becomes a Campbell original. " | ||
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