We are psyched to officially announce a show date at the 2nd Restoration Festival in Albany NY. We will be playing circa 2:30Pm on Sunday, August 28 @ St. Joseph’s Church in Albany NY. Also playing that same day are other great local bands, and the fabled Elephant 6 alumni the Music Tapes and A Hawk and a Hacksaw. Tickets can be purchased @ http://restfest.net/(or the pic below) – then feel free to hear a work in progress from the next Swamp Baby over here on youtube: (Swamp Baby “Rachmed” video)

There was some blog love for Swamp Baby last Fall (namely from No Fear of Pop and largeheartedboy) – this seems to have been the reason we ended up on the November 2010 edition of Blalock’s Indie Playlist. We now have listeners in places as far-ranging as Australia, Latvia, Hong Kong, Belgium and the Netherlands – its a wonder and a blessing to behold! Only thing, the version of Seeing Stars that made it onto the playlist cuts off about a minute too early.

If any of you have the incomplete version of Seeing Stars from the Blalock Indie/Rock Playlist, please let us know – can send you a link to the complete version for free, or just download the complete version here on last.fm. Thanks, and be sure to check back here or at swampbaby.net for news on the forthcoming album.

Swamp Baby @ the Matulis wedding

“All Fours” by American quartet Swamp Baby is that strange thing, an album of first-take songs, many of them approached by the band with little or no preparation. Placing bluesy acoustic guitars with violin, bass, simple drums and subtle backing synths (played by producer Frank Moscowitz) the album is slow, hazy and sun-dappled. Openers ‘Economy’ and ‘Seeing Stars’ set the mood, before the more overtly blues/country ‘New Year’s Eve,’ which illustrates the band’s working method well, and is the highlight of the album. ‘Maine’ is light verging on fragile, while ‘Faust’ rises and falls in unexpected places, and features a lovely keyboard part at the end. ‘Sin Pan Alley’ is mysteriously melancholic, while album closer ‘Red Skies’ brings it all together in a kind of Neil Young-esque waltztime cut. The album as a whole hangs together really well, perhaps because of its semi-improvised, first-take ethos, and stands as an intriguing addition to the canon of “slow and dreamy.”
Terrascope Online, December 2010

Meg and Mike welcomed Emily Wing Hotter into the fold on 9/20/10 – Baby’s Baby:

Emily Wing Hotter

Fall and Winter will see us finishing up our Sophomore release – look for songs to be a lot livelier, louder and even richer in the gorgeous sounds you expect from the Babe!

In the meantime, here’s a new review from a smart babe from Norway:
nofearofpop Swamp Baby All Fours review

Autumn finds Swamp Baby creating and spawning at a truly unruly pace. About a week ago, the band played their first show in many moons, as part of the B3nson Collective’s First Annual Restoration Funstival – here are a few pictures of the band at work and play (click on pics to enlarge):

Swamp Baby, w/ special guest Matthew Carefully on drums

Frank Moscowitz getting jiggy with his Omnichord

We will be following this performance with – another one on Sunday, September 19!

We’re thrilled to be sharing the stage with the following musicians:

Ben Karis-Nix www.benkarisnix.com/benkn/
Matthew Carefully www. heartstack.org
Ashley Pond www.ashleypondmusic.com
Eric Margan www.myspace.com/theredlions

On top of all this greatness, comes news of work on Swamp Baby’s second album. We’re taking everything that was great about the first album, and upping it a notch, with many more variations in tempos, rhythms and moods – many times bubbling over into the rock and roll beast you always knew was lurking inside the Baby!

Til next time, much love to you and yours!

Swampie Bee

A very nice review of the new album by Jeff Penczak, over on Foxy Digitalis – here’s an excerpt:

An exciting new project definitely worth checking out when you’re in a chillout, heavylidded mood. It’s one of the best unsung releases to creep out of nowhere this year – don’t miss it. 9/10

One thing that every one agrees on when it comes to All Fours is that the cover art is simply amazing. This is thanks to artist Phil Pascuzzo, a graphic designer (and drummer for pals Scientific Maps) whose amazing portfolio (which includes books and posters, along with album designs) can be viewed @ www.pepcostudio.com.

When we first approached Phil towards the end of 2009, we gave him some rough mixes of what we recorded in the Temple and the barest of frameworks. We wanted something to emphasize the “four quadrants” aspect of Swamp Baby – when we perform live, it becomes more apparent how important each member of Swamp Baby is to the overall sound and mood, and how we listen and feed off each other.

I did send one visual idea to Phil, an illustration from the recently published Red Book of Carl Jung.

I first learned of Jung through the work of his disciple of sorts Joseph Campbell, whose interview by Bill Moyers in The Power of Myth had a very formative effect on my view of culture, religion, even the nature of the world itself (it helped that I absorbed it at the very impressionable age of 12 or so).

We recorded all of the album’s basic tracks in the same temple where Meg and I were married (wedding date: May 10, 2008). This same space has been home to drum circles, weddings, and other celebrations  – so the space itself holds a lot of meaning for many people.

So we wanted to reflect the four parts that make the whole of Swamp Baby, and also something more archetypal and shared by the much wider community. We think Phil Pascuzzo succeeded brilliantly in helping us achieve that with the album cover and design.  We are fortunate enough to have a few words from the artist himself about the project:

"I was definitely aiming for a psychedelic feel for the cover.
Through color I wanted the cover to look earthy yet vibrant."


"The songs that I heard before starting the project had a very dreamlike,
mystical, and atmospheric quality to them. It also sounded very textural,
which I tried to capture in the layered design of the cover. 

The suggestion of using the Carl Jung image from his Red Book as a
springboard was a very appropriate one. I used the circle with cross symbol
from that piece on all the cover options that I worked on." 


"In Paganism, it means Earth, which fit perfectly to me, since the music
feels organic and growing. The four sections of the circle could also
represent each of the four players,tying into Jung's ideas of individualism
and collective consciousness."
Inside Jacket
Thanks so much, Phil - we'll have to do it again some time . . .

So the first Swamp Baby CD has been out in the world for a couple of weeks now, finding its hand into the hands and ears of both stalwart friends and family, and those wonderful people who have never heard of little Swampy before. We are in the midst of planning a Special Event (or two) to properly celebrate all the hard work that went in to the record, not only from the band members, but the Uber-talented people who helped us package, master and produce it for physical and digital release-  that will happen in due time.

Economy of the Unlost, by Anne Carson

Til then, I  (‘I’ in this case being Bernie Frogmouth – when Turtleman returns, he too shall have his say) think it would be helpful to give a little background on each of the tunes on said platter of wonder, in order to bring it down into the mud and dirt from whence it sprang. All Fours can seem a little foreboding at first, heavy and heady – take the first track for instance, “Economy of the Unlost” – what the hell does “unlost” mean anyway?

Well, to tell it plainly, the phrase ‘Economy of the Unlost’ comes from the work of poet and scholar Anne Carson. Nick Turtleman discovered her when he went back to SUNY Albany to finish up his Bachelor’s (he wound up being Valedictorian of the English Dept. , natch, but his tale of dinner with William Kennedy will have to wait for another installation).

poet/scholar/genius Anne Carson

Being unlost has something to do with memory, and that space between retrieval and void. Kind of a threshold area that we often live in, an area we might find uncomfortable at first. Let’s take a look at Nick’s lyrics (what follows is my interpretation, not Nick’s):

I shot the Moon – DOA on the lake
I shot the breeze – asleep in Summer trees

Economy of the unlost – tie my shoes, 1, 2
Scares the daylights out

This brings to mind a sense of being unmoored – the protagonist/narrator is hyperaware of all around him, down to the wind moving the blades of grass beneath his feet.  This isn’t necessarily good or bad – it just is.

I saw a snake, a sneak in the grass
I covered it with my laugh out loud

The Ourobouros archetype, as depicted by the Aztecs

Part of Anne Carson’s book is a study of two poets (in this case, the ancient Greek Simonides of Keos, and the modern Romanian poet Paul Celan), and how they try to wrestle the ineffable into words. This song, and I’d say much of All Fours, is about much the same thing. Songs shouldn’t have to be about something, or at most,they may be a way to explore or evoke a feeling. But Nick has a way of putting things rather simply on the face of things, but with a world of weight behind them. Much like the world we live in.

Swamp Baby recorded this song, like much of the album, in a configuration where all members faced each other, in a diamond shape, about equidistant apart.  This was about the second time we ever played this as a group – the first time we ever played it was in my kitchen in the old State Street apartment. Nick is still in love with what I came up with in that kitchen, something I only approximated when it came to record in the Temple.

Bernie Frogmouth, during the All Fours sessions

Nick would repeatedly tell us to play our instruments like they were another instrument – for instance, instead of thinking of my Fender Telecaster as a guitar, I would often think of it as some grandiose wind or brass instrument with incredible range – hence the gumption to  play that dropped Eb with such force, then assay the high notes as if they were trumpets on fanfare. (that might have been a Db, since you never quite know what key Nick’s “Stevie Wander” acoustic will be in on any given moment).

Upon listening back, we always thought “Economy” had the feel of fresh things, new starts – it isn’t the catchiest, most bumping track Swamp Baby will ever produce, but it sets a mood, hence the choice to have it open the record. In its abstract frame, it leaves one with a sense that all is possible – that we can look at things in a new, slightly skewed way.

In the next installment of The Annotated All Fours, we’ll take a look at the cover, and the painting by Carl Jung that helped inspire the idea behind it.

Heretofore, we’ve been regaling you with scenes from Swamp Baby past – but with All Fours less than 3 weeks from official release, we think it is  about time to post something more directly related to the new album. In this case, here’s a rough take of “Dog Bones” from the All Fours sessions, with only Nick and Mike on instruments (the whole band joins on vocals during the chorus) – this song didn’t make the final album, but I have a feeling we’re gonna have another swing at it for next time:

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"waiting for the angel to come. . ."