Fellow Camper is a folk duo featuring Lee Watson and Benjamin Roy, who met as literal “fellow campers” sitting around the fire on the shores of Beausoleil Island in Georgian Bay, Canada.
They sing in a close, two-part harmony style, drawing inspiration from Canadian folk pioneers who graced the stages of Toronto’s Yorkville music scene in the 60s and 70s. Combine that with a modern sensibility, and you’ve got Fellow Camper.
The song “Left To Go” is inspired most deeply by the desire to escape from the busy hustle and bustle of life, and looks at this both figuratively and literally. It loosely takes themes from a number of post-apocalyptic dystopian novels like Station Eleven written by the Canadian author Emily St. John Mandel in 2014.
“Left To Go” is a short form of the literal question from the chorus, “Is there somewhere left to go?” that one of the protagonists in the book implicitly asks himself as the early days of the pandemic are announced.
“It can be a lot of fun and really rewarding to borrow ideas and themes from other works of art and create something new from them,” explains Roy. “Station Eleven is a pretty well known work, especially when it became a miniseries in 2021, so it’s not exactly off the beaten path, but as Canadian artists we love shining a light on other Canadian artists and works of art.”