Peter Campbell’s music explores social, political and environmental issues alongside the bitter-sweet matters of the human heart. It delivers a listening experience that awakens human compassion, fosters healing and inspires social change. Expect raucous audience involvement, striking finger-style 6 string, feisty 12 string, tender banjo and arresting a capella.
Passionate songs
Pete recorded his first album, Of Time and its Distance, in Brisbane, Australia in 1975. He recorded his second, Across the Border in Blue Hill, Maine, USA. The producer was folk legend Noel Paul Stookey (Paul of Peter, Paul & Mary fame). PP&M covered his song Wild Places on their album Such is Love and supported them on their 1982 Australian Tour.
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Passion for the environment and the natural world has always been a driving force behind this music. Pete wrote the anthemic One Last Wild River for the fight for the Franklin River in Tasmania. Hope is Rising was features at the giant rally ‘Everyone counts for a nuclear free Australia’. Held on Palm Sunday Disamament Rally in Sydney’s Hyde Park, March 23, 1986 it attracted about 120,000 people. These songs finds new relevance under the existential threat of climate change.
Pete wrote the song Waited Too Long in 2020. It was a positive response to drought and bushfires, social dislocation, financial trauma and the rise of domestic violence during COVID. It became the anthem for the United Nations International Summit on Domestic/Family Violence in the COVID-19 Era. This was a 72 hour world-wide event out of New York. The song is a grim but honest expression of human suffering within the family circle. Leaders and global experts in the field attended with participants from 47 countries. The Summit opened with an address from the Secretary General of the Unite Nations, Antonio Guterres. The event featured a welcome to the global audience from the Pope.
The cataclysmic fires which devastated Australia in 2019/2020 inspired Circle of Wonder. This is a moving tribute to the people that provided such deep support and love to fire affected communities. Same Science is an hilarious but deadly serious call and response challenge to ‘antiscience’. It reveals the hypocrisy of cherry-picking scientific research to suit a denialist agenda in a time of climate change.
A commitment to human rights, social justice and environmental sustainability inform a life of creative endeavour. Pete’s song Coat of Many Colours pushes us to choose in a call to action in the name of humanity.
A creative life
In parallel to his music, Peter is an architectural graduate, graphic designer, photographer, glass artist, magician and ventriloquist. Music has always been the passion, but his creative life has expanded into many other areas. He performed in professional theatre and film with Grahame (Auntie Jack) Bond. He created ‘The Mugic Man’, a rollicking kids show combining magic, ventriloquism and wild banjo. Architectural glass environments have been a specialty – cathedrals, residences and institutions. He has created destination brands and wayfinding systems for cities, regions and towns. He undertook a photographic essay on the closure of the Westons Biscuit Factory in Sydney’s Camperdown in 2004. The Museum of Sydney celebrated the work with a major exhibition called ‘The Biscuit Factory’ in 2007.
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Pete and his wife Jan live in Australia’s beautiful Southern Highlands.