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Campfire Girls Biography
The story of Campfire Girls begins with a perfect summer where everyone was young and beautiful. The rent on the old house was cheap and every night seemed to end in the greatest party anyone could remember. An aspiring young musician named Christian Stone had moved from Boston to Los Angeles, seduced with images of a bacchanalian wonderland inspired by Mötley Crüe, Iggy Pop and the stories of Charles Bukowski.
In a funky old Hollywood house, he and his roommate, drummer Jon Pikus, converted a small dirt-floored basement into a rehearsal space and began writing songs about the exotic neighborhood and all the crazy girls they were meeting. Searching for a bass player, it was Stone’s girlfriend who spotted a young music fan named Andrew Clark and pegged him as the band’s bassist, slipping him Stone’s phone number written on a dollar bill. Andrew spent the dollar, explaining later, “I didn’t really consider myself a real bass player at the time. I was just playing along to records.” Weeks later, Christian and Andrew met at another club and hit it off, spending the following days learning Christian’s bittersweet pop songs in the basement rehearsal space. The two were soon joined by roommate Pikus on drums, and the trio somewhat jokingly called themselves Campfire Girls.
The band made their live debut weeks later in their own backyard before a hundred or so of their closest friends. They followed up with a weekly residency at a just-opened Hollywood watering hole called Bar Deluxe. “We were the first band to play there,” Stone tells. “There wasn’t even a stage, we had to bring our own PA and set up on the floor.” By the third week, Campfire Girls had filled the club to capacity and the ensuing buzz was attracting such intense label interest that the band abruptly cancelled the residency. “We wanted to stay away from the pitfalls that had befallen some of our friend’s bands who had signed to major labels. We decided that instead we would try to release our own material independently to retain creative control,” Stone explains. After putting out a few singles on their own the band eventually signed to a then upstart label called Interscope. “Part of the deal was that Interscope would give us money to release records on our own label,” Stone says, “which they did. Interscope followed through with their end, it was us that didn’t.” Perhaps the success had come too easy for the gifted young band, or maybe it all just came too soon. But with the sudden arrival of plentiful cash and great expectations came the type of self destructive behavior experienced by so many promising musicians. Subtle at first, it began to gain a dark momentum that would soon outpace all but the dead and buried. “I think the pressure of everything just hit me,” Stone tells. “It scared the shit out of me, and I turned to drugs to deal with it.”
As Stone and Clark succumbed to the escapism of drug use, Campfire Girls still managed to complete their first album. The resulting Delongpre was named after the house where it was recorded and captures the troubled atmosphere perfectly. The songs have both a sense of wide-eyed innocence and an underlying sadness. While the label liked what they heard, they were also increasingly concerned with the erratic behavior and emaciated appearance of the band members. Tells Stone, “We deteriorated really quickly after that. The record company never even got around to setting a release date for the record because the rate of our deterioration was so visible.” Both Stone and Clark began bouncing in and out of rehab, pausing only to kick out drummer Pikus for not adequately tolerating their self destruction. By the onset of winter, the Delongpre house that had seemed so filled with promise that previous summer had become just another forsaken Hollywood drug pad. “All of the people that had been around there and who had wanted to be associated with us when it was the cool house were all gone.” Stone says, “And even if people did come by, no one was answering the door anymore.” Unable to pay the rent, Stone and Clark holed up in their respective rooms until a large bearded Sikh man arrived wielding a wooden bed post and chased them off the property. “After that I was just living in my van,” Stone tells. “It was the beginning of my nightmarish drug run. I went crazy and lived on the streets and was working Santa Monica Boulevard doing fucked up things to make money. It happened and it’s a part of my life, and if it bothers people that’s their problem. I’m certainly not going to glorify it, but I’m not going to go out of my way to hide it either.”
All that had transpired for the band, from their initial formation to signing the record deal, making a record and their eventual self destruction, had happened within the span of a single year. “The only way I could deal with it was to do more drugs,” Stone tells. “If I started thinking about the great opportunity I had blown, I immediately shot it out with drugs.” Stone and Clark eventually parted ways, each one disappearing into his own self annihilation. When they did manage a phone conversation, thoughts of what might have been proved unbearable. “Even talking about Andrew would bring me to tears,” Stone remembers, “because I lamented the band and really missed playing music with him, and it seemed so impossible at that point.” Clark agrees, saying, “I cried after our phone conversation as well.” After several years of hustling for drugs, an exhausted Stone was trying desperately to stay clean while working days at a Los Angeles Kinko’s. Clark had also sobered up and was touring the country in a band called Bicycle Thief, opening for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was on that tour that he met an enthusiastic fan of his old band. “We did a leg of the tour with the Stone Temple Pilots,” Clark tells. “And Scott Weiland would constantly say to me, ‘When you get home, you have to play with Christian.’ And that was really how I was feeling too.”
Back in Hollywood, Stone and Clark were working together at a coffee house when Weiland stopped by and invited them to his studio to record some demos. Getting Pikus back on drums, Campfire Girls started writing new songs and playing the occasional acoustic shows around town. While rehearsing one afternoon, a friend of Andrew’s asked if he could join in on guitar for a song. A reluctant Stone agreed and was stunned by how good the band sounded with the additional guitar player, who turned out to be Mike Semple from renowned Arizona bands Friends of Dean Martinez and Giant Sand. “I think they were playing a Mötley Crüe cover,” Semple recalls, “and it was just killing me because they were playing the wrong chords. I wasn’t intending to join because I was actually in another band at the time. It just kind of happened.”
Campfire Girls were again starting to create a buzz and called Interscope to see about formally getting out of their old contract so they could find a record deal. Their old friend and now label president, Mark Williams, asked to hear their new songs and was impressed enough to resign the band to a brand new record deal. Campfire Girls had been given the unlikeliest of second chances. “We appreciate it so much more now,” Christian says. “We’re definitely incredibly lucky, but we’re also really persistent. We could have given up on this a long time ago, but I really believe that the chemistry of this band is worth it.” The band entered the studio with producer Dave Sardy (Dandy Warhols, Marilyn Manson) and began working on a new record they would eventually title Tell Them Hi in reference to all their lonely phone calls home. While recording the band replaced original drummer Pikus with Kellii Scott of Failure. “Jon just couldn’t dedicate the amount of time we needed in order to make this band as great as we think it can be,” Stone explains. “But it was really hard because he’d been there from the very beginning.”
On the new album you can hear a band that has been granted that rarest of chances. The songs are intensely focused, as if the band had been waiting years to make this very record. With Semple on guitar the sound is more complex than before. No longer merely a talented garage band, Campfire Girls have become an accomplished rock band in love with the craft of songwriting Catchy pop melodies are deftly counter balanced with loud guitars, uplifting choruses played against heartfelt verses. The songs are skillfully constructed yet emotionally accessible. It is classic sounding rock resembling an early Cheap Trick with the added guitar crunch of Neil Young or Dinosaur Jr. If there is a sadness to the music it is the mourning of loved ones lost along the way. Clark and Stone were introduced to bandmate Semple by a mutual friend who died much too young. Most of the new songs are about her, and like all the band’s music, they are love songs. Listening to the emotive singing and playing on Tell Them Hi, there is a joyous, slightly defiant quality, as if to say – we’re still here, we’ve survived.
In a funky old Hollywood house, he and his roommate, drummer Jon Pikus, converted a small dirt-floored basement into a rehearsal space and began writing songs about the exotic neighborhood and all the crazy girls they were meeting. Searching for a bass player, it was Stone’s girlfriend who spotted a young music fan named Andrew Clark and pegged him as the band’s bassist, slipping him Stone’s phone number written on a dollar bill. Andrew spent the dollar, explaining later, “I didn’t really consider myself a real bass player at the time. I was just playing along to records.” Weeks later, Christian and Andrew met at another club and hit it off, spending the following days learning Christian’s bittersweet pop songs in the basement rehearsal space. The two were soon joined by roommate Pikus on drums, and the trio somewhat jokingly called themselves Campfire Girls.
The band made their live debut weeks later in their own backyard before a hundred or so of their closest friends. They followed up with a weekly residency at a just-opened Hollywood watering hole called Bar Deluxe. “We were the first band to play there,” Stone tells. “There wasn’t even a stage, we had to bring our own PA and set up on the floor.” By the third week, Campfire Girls had filled the club to capacity and the ensuing buzz was attracting such intense label interest that the band abruptly cancelled the residency. “We wanted to stay away from the pitfalls that had befallen some of our friend’s bands who had signed to major labels. We decided that instead we would try to release our own material independently to retain creative control,” Stone explains. After putting out a few singles on their own the band eventually signed to a then upstart label called Interscope. “Part of the deal was that Interscope would give us money to release records on our own label,” Stone says, “which they did. Interscope followed through with their end, it was us that didn’t.” Perhaps the success had come too easy for the gifted young band, or maybe it all just came too soon. But with the sudden arrival of plentiful cash and great expectations came the type of self destructive behavior experienced by so many promising musicians. Subtle at first, it began to gain a dark momentum that would soon outpace all but the dead and buried. “I think the pressure of everything just hit me,” Stone tells. “It scared the shit out of me, and I turned to drugs to deal with it.”
As Stone and Clark succumbed to the escapism of drug use, Campfire Girls still managed to complete their first album. The resulting Delongpre was named after the house where it was recorded and captures the troubled atmosphere perfectly. The songs have both a sense of wide-eyed innocence and an underlying sadness. While the label liked what they heard, they were also increasingly concerned with the erratic behavior and emaciated appearance of the band members. Tells Stone, “We deteriorated really quickly after that. The record company never even got around to setting a release date for the record because the rate of our deterioration was so visible.” Both Stone and Clark began bouncing in and out of rehab, pausing only to kick out drummer Pikus for not adequately tolerating their self destruction. By the onset of winter, the Delongpre house that had seemed so filled with promise that previous summer had become just another forsaken Hollywood drug pad. “All of the people that had been around there and who had wanted to be associated with us when it was the cool house were all gone.” Stone says, “And even if people did come by, no one was answering the door anymore.” Unable to pay the rent, Stone and Clark holed up in their respective rooms until a large bearded Sikh man arrived wielding a wooden bed post and chased them off the property. “After that I was just living in my van,” Stone tells. “It was the beginning of my nightmarish drug run. I went crazy and lived on the streets and was working Santa Monica Boulevard doing fucked up things to make money. It happened and it’s a part of my life, and if it bothers people that’s their problem. I’m certainly not going to glorify it, but I’m not going to go out of my way to hide it either.”
All that had transpired for the band, from their initial formation to signing the record deal, making a record and their eventual self destruction, had happened within the span of a single year. “The only way I could deal with it was to do more drugs,” Stone tells. “If I started thinking about the great opportunity I had blown, I immediately shot it out with drugs.” Stone and Clark eventually parted ways, each one disappearing into his own self annihilation. When they did manage a phone conversation, thoughts of what might have been proved unbearable. “Even talking about Andrew would bring me to tears,” Stone remembers, “because I lamented the band and really missed playing music with him, and it seemed so impossible at that point.” Clark agrees, saying, “I cried after our phone conversation as well.” After several years of hustling for drugs, an exhausted Stone was trying desperately to stay clean while working days at a Los Angeles Kinko’s. Clark had also sobered up and was touring the country in a band called Bicycle Thief, opening for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was on that tour that he met an enthusiastic fan of his old band. “We did a leg of the tour with the Stone Temple Pilots,” Clark tells. “And Scott Weiland would constantly say to me, ‘When you get home, you have to play with Christian.’ And that was really how I was feeling too.”
Back in Hollywood, Stone and Clark were working together at a coffee house when Weiland stopped by and invited them to his studio to record some demos. Getting Pikus back on drums, Campfire Girls started writing new songs and playing the occasional acoustic shows around town. While rehearsing one afternoon, a friend of Andrew’s asked if he could join in on guitar for a song. A reluctant Stone agreed and was stunned by how good the band sounded with the additional guitar player, who turned out to be Mike Semple from renowned Arizona bands Friends of Dean Martinez and Giant Sand. “I think they were playing a Mötley Crüe cover,” Semple recalls, “and it was just killing me because they were playing the wrong chords. I wasn’t intending to join because I was actually in another band at the time. It just kind of happened.”
Campfire Girls were again starting to create a buzz and called Interscope to see about formally getting out of their old contract so they could find a record deal. Their old friend and now label president, Mark Williams, asked to hear their new songs and was impressed enough to resign the band to a brand new record deal. Campfire Girls had been given the unlikeliest of second chances. “We appreciate it so much more now,” Christian says. “We’re definitely incredibly lucky, but we’re also really persistent. We could have given up on this a long time ago, but I really believe that the chemistry of this band is worth it.” The band entered the studio with producer Dave Sardy (Dandy Warhols, Marilyn Manson) and began working on a new record they would eventually title Tell Them Hi in reference to all their lonely phone calls home. While recording the band replaced original drummer Pikus with Kellii Scott of Failure. “Jon just couldn’t dedicate the amount of time we needed in order to make this band as great as we think it can be,” Stone explains. “But it was really hard because he’d been there from the very beginning.”
On the new album you can hear a band that has been granted that rarest of chances. The songs are intensely focused, as if the band had been waiting years to make this very record. With Semple on guitar the sound is more complex than before. No longer merely a talented garage band, Campfire Girls have become an accomplished rock band in love with the craft of songwriting Catchy pop melodies are deftly counter balanced with loud guitars, uplifting choruses played against heartfelt verses. The songs are skillfully constructed yet emotionally accessible. It is classic sounding rock resembling an early Cheap Trick with the added guitar crunch of Neil Young or Dinosaur Jr. If there is a sadness to the music it is the mourning of loved ones lost along the way. Clark and Stone were introduced to bandmate Semple by a mutual friend who died much too young. Most of the new songs are about her, and like all the band’s music, they are love songs. Listening to the emotive singing and playing on Tell Them Hi, there is a joyous, slightly defiant quality, as if to say – we’re still here, we’ve survived.
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