Not all messages are displayed:
show all messages (74 of them)
From my Nashville Scene ballot comments re 2019 picks:
Swamp Dogg's Sorry You Couldn't Make It is a slightly, yet appropriately weirder return of Memphis-Muscle Shoals country soul, like some of the Stax Country collection. I wasn't expecting his proto-alt.r&b milestoneds like Total Destruction To Your Mind, but at first this seemed like mainly for digging the formal pleasures of vintage style, incl. this version of "Don't Take Her (She's All I Got)," which he co-wrote with Gary US Bonds; it was a Johnny Paycheck hit in the early 70s---main prob on these first tracks is mild-mannered vocals, settling down into the ballads for a snooze (although got some lines, like "Good, Better, Best" keeps sounding like "good, better in bed,"which fits the context better, and might grow on me)---then he picks up the tempo with "Family Pain" ( houseful staying together, "smokin' crack and doin' cocaine"), and when he slow it back down for "I Lie Awake," his voice is still awake and then some: this is true country soul, Doggedly climbing Insomnia Mountain in compulsive country self-torture---Otis Redding and George Jones could sing the shit out of it, but Dogg does it fine.
"Memories," featuring John Prine, is where the appropriate weirdness first appears (I think), with Doggtronics swirling around Prine's jaunty heels (as he repeats the chorus again and again, like old folks sometimes do), even distorting his voice towards the end, like memories sometimes do.
"Billy" I'd seen referred to as a tearjerker, but differently interesting than expected: he's got nice musical flowers, but "The neighbors think I'm crazy," so apparently not a normie gravesite? "You should see Billy, he looks just like you, he doesn't remember you, but I guess that's just as well." Like with Opie's Mom? Memories can be too paniful, I reckon--anyway it leaves a few more little such gaps to fill in, not overselling.
Rude retinue of soundz around the edges of "I'd Rather Be Your Used To Be," which is otherwise vintage Willie-style graceful indignation, but maybe louder.
"A Good Song" ("has universal appeal"), then back to riding the swirl with Prine, for "Please Let Me Go Round Again," where they agree that, "I could build a better mousetrap, from a far mo'better plan." "Hey John, could you build a better mousetrap?" "I gotta better mousetrap right here in my mind!" Also wonders if Somebody might put them on a 2-for-1 plan.
― dow, Saturday, 12 February 2022 17:23 (two years ago) link
That album, and a bunch more, incl. classicks, are on his Bandcamp. Likewise an advance track from his Feb. 25 full-length:
Hey there!
Wanted to give you a heads up that Don Giovanni will be releasing a new single from Soul / R+B legend SWAMP DOGG this Tuesday, Feb 15th. The song is called "I Need A Job." It is the partially-titular second single to be released ahead of his new album titled I Need A Job... So I Can Buy More Auto-Tune which is out Feb 25th.
“I need a job worse than a dead man needs a coffin,” belts a desperate, auto-tune drenched Swamp Dogg. Swamp details his battle with unemployment over a deep funk. Saxophone licks cascade over stomping drums, and slapped bass fills poke through in between Swamp’s financial woes. Despite the virtuosity of his backing band, Swamp Dogg remains the show stealer, especially as his performance spins off into a talk-sung resume, explaining that he is a singer and a musician but clarifying “I can do things other than that, I have done things other than that, before I was a singer and a musician,” all filtered through his iconic auto-tune.
Would be great if you'd consider coverage with a dedicated news post to the release of the single. Also, please reach out if you're interested in feature and/or review coverage around the album's release on Feb 25! thanks so much.
Mike Campbell / Don Giovanni Records
https://www.dongiovannirecords.com/
― dow, Saturday, 12 February 2022 17:43 (two years ago) link
I saw him at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival one summer outdoors on the National Mall. The concert ended with him endlessly vamping the last chorus of I can’t remember the name of the song (except each chorus ended with “How long, how long”), while he went into the audience and shook hands with every person in the audience, maybe a couple hundred. Also he was wearing an amazing red suit.
― Johnny Mathis der Maler (Boring, Maryland), Sunday, 13 February 2022 18:21 (two years ago) link
two weeks pass...
one month passes...
hadnt heard about the new one but spotted it in the store the other day and grabbed it without a second thought, loving it this week.
poking around that bandcamp page, i just grabbed the Sorry You Couldn't Make It Demos - i hadn't realized that most of those songs seem to have been written in the 70s and 80s!
― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Tuesday, 5 April 2022 12:35 (two years ago) link
one year passes...