Cam Cole is the rare artist who creates an entire atmosphere the moment he steps onstage. His sounds are raw and physical, and his presence is magnetic. Not bad for a one-man band.

 

Whether discussing his music’s alchemy of blues, metal, and rock ‘n’ roll or his New Age Collective’s traveling music and tech community, his independent path brings it all together. He puts on an annual psychedelic rock festival called Freaks In a Field, creates his music, builds custom mobile stages, and even designs and crafts his own sound systems. It is the kind of world-building that turns an artist into a movement.

 

In this interview, Cole — who relies heavily on Sennheiser microphones like the e 935, e 906, and Evolution Series drum mics — explains why he continues to blaze the unique path he’s on. From the technical considerations to taking care of his roving band of artistic conspirators, he explains what goes into doing things his own way.

 

 

Yeah, true that. There are two reasons why I did things differently. One reason is that every deal I was offered by the industry took away my freedom to pursue other creative dreams and ideas.

 

Two is, I’ve had bad experiences in the past with signing contracts, and then the other partners don’t keep up their side of the agreement, and they waste your time. So I decided to do things independently to pursue all my ideas. Once you decide that is what you want to do, then reality hits fast (laughs) as nothing happens unless you take action. You got nowhere to hide.

 

The benefits are having complete creative freedom and being connected with no middle party to your audience. The drawbacks are that you have to build the entire infrastructure that will logistically enable you to put on shows, market music, and essentially make it happen for your audience, which usually takes entire industry teams. That also means you have no time for yourself, which isn’t easy for my manager and me, but we love doing it this way.

 

 

 

Well, I had a vision, but the crew itself grew organically. I ended up building my first stage truck and sound system myself when I was 25, from the money I made busking in London. I began putting on small, free parties at Stonehenge and Avebury Stone Circle in England. That was also around the time I started getting some recognition as a one-man band.

 

By 29, I had made a bit of a name for myself in the scene, so I decided to wing it by putting on a small semi-legal festival and ask my followers and everyone I knew if they wanted to get involved with this traveling stage/rock rave idea.

 

Loads got involved initially. We had about 25 people on the crew. It was great to have that support, but not everyone was right to be involved. Three years later, seven of us are now fully involved. All of us are super dedicated, competent, and reliable. 

 

And now the stage is starting to make money, which means all seven of ‘em can take a wage. So, happy days!

 

 

I’m very happy with what I’ve built, and now, what my team and I have built. 

Honestly, there’s not one thing I or we did that suddenly made everything work well. It’s more like hundreds of small tweaks. This one-man band stuff isn’t easy because there is so much noise around a relatively small area. Feedback was a big problem in the early days, and to fix that, we improved my pedalboard and monitoring.

 

You just have to constantly reflect on what doesn’t work yet, improve, and don’t get discouraged when shit breaks. If you have enough willpower and persistence, you will find the point of balance with anything.

 

It’s more a question of will. Having the courage to try out new ideas and potentially failing is also part of it.

 

And I’m still tweaking it. We are going to add a load of gramophone-style horns to our stage sound system next, for both visual effect and to fill out some dead spaces. But that will throw everything off again temporarily, whilst we figure out how to make it work! 

 

I’m very grateful for the success I’ve had with my fanbase. It grew originally from street performing in London. My street show created a buzz big enough to pull 50 people into a live venue, and from that point, booking agents got interested. What I didn’t realize at the time was that people filmed me playing on the streets, and these videos started building a fanbase online all across the world.

 

I think it resonates at first because it looks so different and interesting. But then, people also connect with the songs and all the other stuff that I do. I’m not trying to sell anything or follow a trend, and I guess that attracts people that like their music to be that way.

 

 

The aim was to paint and color in the world around me, build things that catch people’s eyes, and write music that captivates their ears and hearts. To create an entire immersive space for an experience.

 

People can step into my space when they’ve had enough of the real world, and they can step back out when they’re ready to take it on again. Music, live shows, festivals, and raves to me are a necessity for a healthy, productive society.

 

All I want to do is provide space for people to sit in whilst they recharge. As long as they take that away, I have done my job.