Camille Thornton is a songwriter, artist, and essayist working in Nashville, Tennessee. Born and raised in a highly governmental family on the outskirts of Washington, DC, she escaped the throes of bureaucracy to study Recorded Music and English at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Upon graduating, she moved to Tennessee, where she has most recently recorded her debut album, Something True, live to tape at Woodland Studios with the help of Matt Andrews, engineer for Gillian Welch and many others. She runs a weekly literary salon from her home in East Nashville.
Her songcraft is both highly studied, reflecting a formal training in classical composition and theory, while being decidedly forward-looking in its curiosities. Presenting her songs with sparse musical textures, favoring vintage instruments and traditional playing techniques, Thornton’s prowess is in service to forces much larger than herself; this ethic breeds a sincerity that is reflected through each song’s performance, and plots the songwriter along a rich lineage of storytelling. Lyrically, she invites the listener to join the narrative, questioning the contemporary moment, while allowing her experiences to serve as signposts toward collective truth in a manner akin to her literary north star, Joan Didion. Instrumentally, listeners will find an effortlessness to each song’s pulse, timbre, and delivery.
At the nexus of American bedrock, indie, and pop music forms, with the stark flair of a deeply gifted essayist, Thornton’s voice is emerging as a much needed ripple in the gamut of young up-and-comers.