Campground Music — What to Listen to While Camping

Campground Music — Songs to Hear While Camping

The mood of a campsite shifts from moment to moment and season to season, and it makes us listen closely to whatever music is playing. For campers who search for playlists every weekend, a drama music director with 23 years in the business has lined up a string of songs that sound great at a campground.

Words Kim Soohan

“Radish rice only tastes right on a day when the snow is coming down in big flakes.”
That was a line my father used to say when I was little, and it sounded like a spell. Radish rice, eaten on a day when heavy snow falls over the whole world. I rather like the midwinter radish rice made with autumn radishes, but I have yet to taste the flavor my father described. What I am really curious about, in truth, is less that ultimate taste than the scene that rises in my mind: sitting in front of a steaming meal table on the warmest spot of a heated floor, the sliding door thrown wide open, slowly eating a bowl of rice while watching white snow fall outside. That is the highest realm of gastronomy, as far as I am concerned.

This winter, I started winter camping again for the first time in 15 years. Winter camping back then was like military cold-weather training, and I shuddered every time I went. Now the gear has improved and campground conditions are excellent. Three or four days pass happily, with no miserable scrimping, and I can even strike a few poses. Winter is also far more peaceful than the crowded spring, summer and fall, so I sometimes catch myself thinking, a little crazily, that winter might be the best season for camping.

Since I have gone from radish rice to camping, some of you may suspect that I go camping just to make radish rice. I am not that simple. I do make radish rice, of course, but camping has plenty of other charms, too many to list here. Talking would only make my mouth sore, so I will tell you about just one: music.

Music at a campground is definitely different. It is very unlike listening at home, in a studio or in a music bar. In nature, a well-equipped high-end audio system or a space carefully designed for listening is of no use. Sometimes music coming from a smartphone or a cheap Bluetooth speaker moves you even more. I am not sure why. Maybe it is because the sounds of wind, running water, birdsong, crackling firewood, falling rain and dropping leaves all blend together. At those moments, music feels richer and yet somehow more spacious. In my experience, that holds true morning and evening alike.

Now I would like to recommend a few songs for the campground. Campground manners have to be kept in mind, so most of them are inevitably quiet ones. I have added a short note to each recommendation.

Hollywood

The Alternate Routes

You are hooked the moment the guitar intro starts and the vocals come in. Once you hear this song, you will never forget it, and you will not tire of it no matter how many times you play it. I guarantee it. The Alternate Routes is a band that moves between country, folk and rock, and hardly any of their songs feel half-baked. I also recommend ‘Desdemona’ and ‘Nothing More, All My Love.’

Master & Hound

Gregory Alan Isakov

Every song by Gregory Alan Isakov is so good that I cannot pick just one. There are too many to recommend, starting with ‘San Francisco.’ I suggest playing the whole album straight through.

A Case of You

Aoife O’Donovan

This is a version Aoife O’Donovan sang as a guest at a concert by Chris Thile, the mandolinist of the band Punch Brothers. Joni Mitchell’s original is, of course, wonderful too.

Moon River

Frank Ocean

Hear how he has transformed ‘Moon River,’ a song almost everyone in the world knows. There seems to be something in Frank Ocean’s voice that no one else can approach. I also strongly recommend ‘American Wedding,’ which seamlessly swaps in new lyrics for another famous song, ‘Hotel California.’ From the first line, it makes you forget the Eagles. While you are at it, do not skip ‘Strawberry Swing’ from the same album. As a side note, Audrey Hepburn’s ‘Moon River’ is, of course, very good too.

Sky Blue Sky

Wilco

When you are groggy from last night’s drinking, or sprawled in a hammock and unwilling to lift a finger, this song will send you straight to another galaxy. Compared with Wilco’s other songs, it is quite mellow. It warms the heart and lifts the mood.

Take It with Me

Tom Waits

If there is such a thing as the hollow ache of a man who has lived through it all, perhaps this is it. You do not even need a snack to go with your soju. While you are at it, look up versions by other singers, too. The one by Solveig Slettahjell is good, and so is the one by Rachael Price.

The Sound of Silence

Paul Simon

Skip the original and try the version he sang at the 2012 Hyde Park concert in London. I shed a few tears. The song has a depth it never had before. The ‘The Sound of Silence’ he sang with Garfunkel, reunited after a long time, at Madison Square Garden in New York in 2009 is good too. They say the voice is the last thing to change with age, and it turns out to be true.

The Book of Love

Peter Gabriel

Where the Magnetic Fields original is light and unadorned, this version feels thicker and weightier. I can’t stand heavy music that drags along, but this song is different.

Un Vestido y un Amor

Caetano Veloso

Elegant and sweet. It would rival a front-row seat at an open-air concert hall. After this one, picture the garden scene in the film “Talk to Her” and listen to Caetano Veloso’s well-known ‘Cucurucucu Paloma.’ While you’re at it, listen to the version Harry Belafonte sang at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1963. It’s a cheerful one.

Once I start writing, there’s no end to it, so I’ll wrap up my recommendations here. I ran out of space and couldn’t introduce any Korean pop songs, which is a real shame. If the chance comes, I’ll lay them all out for you next time.
Now I plan to simmer a thick doenjang jjigae (soybean paste stew) with siraegi (dried radish greens), and to make muppap (radish rice) again, served with leafy-green kimchi and tohajeot (salted freshwater shrimp). Will it snow? I’d like to fling open the shelter door and eat lunch very slowly, watching the whole world turn white and blowing on the steaming radish rice. It would look even better with a traditional double-leaf hinged door… but there’s probably no such tent anywhere in the world.