Deeply Rooted
Left Vessel’s music uses living trees as instruments Written by Ben Salmon Nick Byron Campbell will say that he has been making music in the “normal” sense since his mid-teens. What’s normal? Playing instruments. Writing songs. Starting bands. Touring, recording, even signing to a record label. “It was an amazing experience,” said Campbell, who lives in Bend. “Wildly intense.” After a while, though, he felt his perspective shifting at about the same time the music industry was being revolutionized—not necessarily in a good way—by easily accessible recording software and digital streaming platforms. “I still love playing with bands, releasing records—that’s still a huge thing for me. But there’s just so much music and it’s been so intensely devalued as a good,” he said. “I think I just subconsciously started wondering how I could do this differently from the way 10,000 other people are doing it.” Inspired by a childhood encounter…
