Name 3 Songs: Vacations has been a project for 10+ years now. Coming from Newcastle, Australia, did it feel like touring the world was something that could be a reality for you?

Campbell Burns, Vacations: Absolutely not. It’s almost naive and cute to reflect on, but I really only thought about my music in the proximity of my hometown and my friends. I did not see it even traveling as far as Sydney, which for context, it’s a city that’s two hours away from Newcastle by car. So I just didn’t even think about it. I was in my own little world just playing DIY house shows, going to gigs all the time – just really invested in my local music scene, my community, which is funny, because it’s like obviously being a child of the internet, of course music can travel so far, but it’s not where my head was at. I never thought like, oh, like someone in America could be listening to it or someone in Russia or Argentina or whatever. I was really like, this is what’s here and what’s in front of me. I’m going to engage with this, which I think is a positive thing.

In reading interviews that you’ve done, you’ve been so forthcoming about your personal mental health issues, which I find very admirable because a lot of other artists will be like, oh yeah, I struggle with mental health, but don’t go into specifics. It was really interesting to see the juxtaposition of your songs being lyrically ambiguous, and then in interviews, you’re so comfortable being so explicit about your personal struggles. So do you feel like the pseudo-lyrical ambiguity that you have and then the honesty you have in interviews is something you’ve done consciously to balance out how forthcoming you are?

Not particularly. I think in terms of honesty and interviews or conversations, I just genuinely like talking about mental health, and I think it’s a stigma that needs to continue to be broken down. Especially as a man, that’s a funny sentence to say, but going to therapy and just being really open about these thoughts and feelings. 

Especially because I spent three years in therapy. And at first I was just going because I [thought I had] a generalized anxiety or depression or something like that. And we were trying to just navigate through that and figure it out. And then finally getting to that point where it’s like, okay, there’s actually something deeper here and being able to have that conversation and get that diagnosis of Pure OCD. 

And then I’ve found that by doing that, it’s almost become this strength of mine to have emotional empathy towards others and just have those conversations, because it comes up so often in songwriting. If i’m doing songwriting with other people they’re like “oh I’m going through this, oh i’m going through that” and you have to know how to be able to talk about those feelings. You want to be able to write a song and the most important part of the song is that the emotional weight of it has to connect with other people. That’s so paramount. That’s why people listen to music.

With you being so personal in your songwriting, do you feel any kind of weight when you’re releasing them to the public?

I don’t know. I wish I had an answer for that. If anything, it’s kind of funny to me. I’m like, “oh, wow, there’s all these thoughts and feelings and now it’s out into the world.” It almost doesn’t feel like me anymore. It’s just like that’s past me. And I’m like, “That’s cool. That’s really sick that he went and did all these things. And now it’s out into the world.” Again, it’s something that’s dynamic. It’ll change over time. It’ll change when I start to perform these songs live for the first time. It’ll change depending on what the visuals are for the show, the merchandise, how people connect with it, how I curate that experience with my band members and our team. Yeah, it’s just something that’s always ever-changing. So I’m excited to see how that goes.