Will Anderson’s world shattered on Nov. 14, 2022, when his wife, Courtney Kampa, died suddenly in her sleep.
For months, he couldn’t write or sing. He said he was “catatonic,” barely able to function under the weight of grief.
“I played golf a lot because it was the one place I could concentrate on something,” he told an audience at The Tennessean during a recent performance where he performed three songs off his brand new album as well as a throwback tune from his days as the frontman of platinum-selling band Parachute.
“She was 30 years old and just the smartest, kindest, sweetest and most gorgeous human being you’d ever meet,” Anderson said.
The two met at the University of Virginia in 2007.
“She was a sophomore and I was a senior,” he recalled. “She came running up and talked to me. I turned and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, who is this beautiful angel talking to me?'”
He thought she was dating a mutual friend, but when they cleared up the miscommunication and started dating, Anderson knew Kampa was the one.
“It was just a matter of when,” he said. “We got to a point where we were just ready to be married.”
Six months after her death, he was in a Nashville coffee shop when the urge to write finally returned.
“It spilled out of me one day,” he said. “This album is my eulogy to her.”
“How Little Love Is / How Worth Everything” unfolds as both a love letter and a farewell, blending acoustic musings, orchestral piano ballads and funky pop songs.
“This album is kind of the journey of our whole relationship and my journey of grief,” he said. One of the 12 tracks, titled “Cherry Coke,” is about when the two started dating.
New album, new book
Anderson will embark on an acoustic tour this fall, showcasing not only his deeply personal project but also a book of poetry written by his wife. Her posthumously published book is out Oct. 14.
“She’s such an amazing writer,” Anderson said. “My favorite poet of all time.”
The concert venues will be intimate. Just him, his guitar and the stage. His falsetto cuts through high notes while his storytelling lyrics trace the memories of a love story cut short.
In the produced version of “Together Forever,” he preserved the only voicemail he had from Kampa.
“I wrote a song about what it was like listening to that voicemail,” he said. He thinks it would probably be her favorite track on the album.
“She loved my voice with an acoustic guitar,” he said. “She loved it most when I would just sit and sing to her.”
For Anderson, every song is still for her.
His full performance for USA TODAY Acoustic is below.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville’s Will Anderson turns grief into song on debut solo album
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