GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A new biography titled Coming All Over the Country, chronicling the life of frontman Ollie Campbell of Ollie Campbell and the Pickups, bears the deceased singer’s least-favorite lyric, according to unconcerned sources.
“Ollie’s been dead for a few years now, so what’s he gonna say about it? It’s words he wrote and later sang almost every night,” said Ruby Ruiz, the former Pickups bassist. “It was really just a throw away line in our most popular song ‘White Out.’ I think the music video of Ollie is using a garden hose to spray paint a giant map of America white probably made it worse — the song was meant to represent the death of indigenous cultures, but it really just looks like cum, now that I think about it.”
Ruiz explained that the surviving members of the Pickups had little involvement with the book writing process, but when consulted about the title, they all agreed Coming All Over the Country was both “fitting” and “fucking hilarious.”
“I thought everyone knew [Campbell] hated that song, and that line in particular, more than anything else he’d ever written. Even more than his song ‘Bareback Cowboy,’” said keyboard player Rudy “The Buzzed Buzzard” Cox. “But when the publisher approached us about fact-checks and we saw the title, we figured, fuck it — Ollie was always an asshole. Why shouldn’t his memory forever be associated with a double entendre about ejaculating in, or on, every part of the United States?”
Phyllis Johns, the author of Coming All Over the Country: The Ollie Campbell Story, maintained that a title referencing the band’s chart-topping song “just made sense, even if some people can’t keep their brains out of the gutter when reading it.”
“It obviously refers to Campbell’s legendary work ethic, and his dedication to touring extensively throughout his 30-plus year career,” said Johns. “And the band agrees with me, by the way: they were overjoyed about the title I chose. Ruby giggled with delight when I told her.”
Ultimately, Campbell’s incorporeal essence successfully contacted former Pickups drummer Rhys Cochran via a high-priced medium in an effort to change the book title to “literally anything else.”
“I do feel kinda bad,” admitted Cochran, “but the title stays put. After the psychic spoke to me, Campbell’s ghost or whatever stuck me with the bill. So fuck that cheap prick.”