After having moved around most of her life, living in Pasadena, Philadelphia and the Philippines, singer Conchita Campos came to New York nearly five years ago and has called Brooklyn home for the past two.
A sense of place has played a large part in Campos' music, with her laid back tunes bear the influence of her West Coast upbringing, and a more gritty sound coming from her time in New York, and an even larger one in her life as well.
Campos was one of hundreds of tenants evicted earlier this year after an illegal matzoh factory was found operating in the basement, and only recently was eviction notice was lifted.
When let back in to her loft to retrieve her belongings, the first things the songwriter went to were her keyboards and guitar, leaving behind CDs, furniture and other items forgotten.
While waiting to return to 475 Kent, Campos was holed up in Manhattan's Upper East Side and couldn't wait to move back to Brooklyn.
“I really miss Brooklyn. I miss the building so much,” the singer said a couple weeks before the eviction notice was lifted.
It was moving to Brooklyn that the musician started branching out into her own music career. Growing up in a musical family, with her dad a jazz player before making the shift to academia, Campos studied music herself while at San Francisco State University and then worked in the radio business in the Bay Area. Moving to New York, she stayed in the radio business, but found it wasn’t for her.
Instead, she started pursuing her own music career, writing songs and playing out more at open mic nights and a songwriter series at The Bitter End. Living at 475 Kent planted the seeds of the formation of her backup band as she met fellow musicians and started collaborating with different people and playing at bigger venues such as Crash Mansion.
“The more we played, the more chemistry we created,” said Campos, who when she's with her band goes by Conchita’s Collective.
When Campos performs live, though, at places like Sidewalk Caf
