MM: You had quite a number of releases on M&E; first solo - “Mixed Messages” (M&E 050, Apr 92), “False Positive” (M&E 206, Jul 93) and “Transition Man” (M&E 213, Oct 93); collaborative - “Pen Pals 2” with various guest artists (M&E 363, Nov 96) and “Western Union” with Robin O’Brien (M&E 436, Jul 98); the travelogue - “Don Campau & Kevyn Dymond In Europe, Oct - Nov 1991” (M&E 243, Jan 94); your radioshows (I remember your wild handwritten playlists, you should have been a doctor!) - “No Pigeonholes No. 275” (M&E 087, Jul 92) and “No Pigeonholes No. 289” (M&E 113, Dec 92); and a Lonely Whistle Music compilation – “Sampler 2000” (M&E 567, Jan 01). M&E, of course, ceased to be as of sometime toward the end of 2003, so it’s all just archive these days, though “Western Union” still comes out of mothballs for regular listens, my personal favourite. KFR seems to have come to an end circa 1997/98, though Lonely Whistle Music clearly survived. I know when my M&E activities originally ceased, I missed it all terribly, do you ever miss the KFR era, how much do you think it achieved and how would you like to have seen it all pan out?

DC: I think fondly on those days but I am not sure I miss them. I did what I wanted to do and moved forward. The thing is I have never stopped. Everything has always run just about the same way since 1984 or so. Sure, people switched from cassettes to CDR’s (and now are switching back to tapes and records, and mp3’s, of course), and the community of home tapers isn’t the same as it was. Still, there are active Facebook groups and other means of being together. Sometimes I do long for that special feeling of “community” I talk about but really I have it now as much or more as I did then. If anything I am even busier now that I am retired and work part time.

MM: Yeah, there are times I want to go back to work for a rest! Now, I recall Kevyn being quite the ladies man. Well, Tilly The Space Cat certainly took a shine to him. Then again, a lap cat to a permanently available lap? He never stood a chance. And aside from flirting outrageously with our Sensemillia and her “dreamy red hair”, he also kept going on about this truly amazing singer (he wasn’t wrong) who he thought was an absolute angel and who he seriously wanted to marry. I think her name was Robin O’Brien, wonder how that worked out for him? ☺ So, you married Robin in 1996. Poor Kevyn. I seem to remember her being from the other side of the States to you, which would be no big deal in England, but probably several thousand miles in the U.S. How did the two of your first get to know eachother and at what point did you realise this was your future wife and musical soulmate? 

DC: Robin has always adored Kevyn and still does. I just acted quicker! Robin and I were only friends for many years and she or her keyboard player would send tapes of their newest music. I would respond by sending her my own music and letters of my daily doings and feelings. This was simply a friendship we developed over the years. There would be some major gaps in our communications and after one particular gap we realized that we were both now divorced. This was 1994 or so. We started chatting on the phone and we exchanged hundreds of handwritten letters exposing our very souls and fears and feelings to each other. At one point I said something like “well, I’m not sure this can all go anywhere because of our great distance apart”. She made a positive statement that maybe, just maybe, it could happen and that was all it took for me. Since I was already powerfully affected and attracted to her I laid bare my soul and held nothing back. She did the same and we fell in  love. We had not even met yet when I asked her to marry me in a letter. I remember shaking in the parking lot of the post office when I got her return letter and she had agreed with my proposal. Soon, I flew to New Jersey to meet her and within a year or so she had moved with her two small children to San Jose and we got married. Remember, at this point I was a single father with 3 three kids too. That blended family stuff you hear about is true: it is harder than hell.  You must remember that all of this was before the internet. There were no emails, just handwritten letters and various items of junk I would send her to romance her. One of our favorites was a netted bag that held 50 lbs of onions that had two purple onions looking at each other in a special way. Kevyn, Robin and myself even had a recording group for awhile called The Selfish Gandhis.

MM: After your visit to Frimley in 1991, I don’t suppose I really expected to ever see you in the flesh again, but then there was that most bizarre of coincidences to come, following your marriage to Robin. She had a sister, her sister had emigrated to England, where she had married the vicar of St. Peter’s Church, the local parish church of… wait for it… FRIMLEY!!! How trippy was that? So anyway, late on in ’96, you were back in England, with your new mailorder bride, and inviting us to meet up at a vicarage tea party not 10 minutes walk from our own front door. I remember putting on my best “Same Shit Different Day” t-shirt and strolling down with Sam in the pleasant afternoon sunshine. Unique experience, I’d never been to a vicarage tea party before. Thinking about it, I’d never heard a vicar use the f-word before either! Cool day with a few interesting folk I’d not before, including the late Fred Frantic. What are your own memories of that get together and when can we expect your sister-in-law’s husband to get the job of parish priest in Knott End-On-Sea? 

I've no idea what I'd just played, but it seemed to make Robin laugh...

DC: That was pretty amazing. When Robin and I married we took a similar trip that Kevyn and I had taken some years earlier. Our honeymoon included stops in France, Germany and England. There were also many other bizarre coincidences to this trip too. Many “small world” moments we have come to expect over the years because they have continued to happen. That was an amazing party at her sister Wendy’s house. It was my first time meeting her sister (whom had lived in England for 25 years and married the town vicar) and her husband Neil. So, we had Robin’s family plus my home taping friends from that part of the UK join up for a little party. You, the late Fred Frantic, Fred’s pal Al (who was a white witch who handfasted Robin and I at Avebury earlier), Morgan Bryan, USA expatriate Tim Gilbert and maybe some others. I remember you and Fred having a tense moment when he recalled a rather poor review you had given of one of his tapes. For a moment I thought you guys might duke it out.

MM: Actually, it wasn’t a review, it was a rather tactless letter I sent some years earlier, declining the addition of his music to the M&E catalogue. I was trying to apologise for my insensitivity, something I was guilty of far more often in the days before I knew I had Asperger’s, but unfortunately he was having none of it. I couldn’t have imagined Fred raising a hand to anyone, seemed too decent a sort for that, he just kept his distance for the duration. Shame really.

And the fun went on long in to the evening: Robin (left), Don (centre) and a couple of the other revellers, all moving in mysterious ways...