‘Live At ETH’ Featured Guests, August 3

 

There’s No Place Like Home, For Brown Bird Fiddler

By Nancy K. Crevier

MorganEve Swain, who along with Dave Lamb makes up the acoustic indie folk band Brown Bird, will return to her hometown for the second time in just over a year on Friday, August 3, in a “Live at the Edmond Town Hall” concert. Brown Bird opened for the indie folk rock quartet Low Anthem last June at the same venue.

Defining Brown Bird (whose name originated with Mr Lamb’s brown dog, Bird) is difficult, said Ms Swain, but what it is not, she emphasized, is a bluegrass band.

“We want to dispel that myth,” she stressed. “By default, we’re a folk band, I guess, which can be anything. My problem with the word ‘folk’ is that people think Bob Dylan. But folk might mean something different to one person than another,” she said, falling back on her degree in music ethnicology. It is folk music, Ms Swain said, but in a much more global sense.

Likened to blues, early Americana Appalachia, European folk, and old time country, the couple pulls from many music styles when writing their original lyrics and music. “Each song is kind of its own thing,” said Ms Swain, who plays upright bass and cello, as well as the fiddle for which she is best known in Newtown. Mr Lamb adds acoustic guitar, banjo and percussion, and both of the musicians provide vocals to songs that are as haunting as they are lyrical.

Eastern European “Gypsy” bands, metal bands like Mastodon, and old country classics weave their ways through the music of Brown Bird, and not surprisingly, there is some influence of the Cape Briton and classic music that has played a big part in Ms Swain’s musical life.

Beginning as a Suzuki violin student in Sandy Hook, under Linda Emzer, when she was 3 years old, Ms Swain discovered Scottish fiddling just five years later, while visiting Prince Edward Island, Canada, with friends.

“That steered me in the direction I have gone,” said Ms Swain.

Her older brother, Spencer, with whom she played semi-professionally for many years, has also influenced her.

“He was a huge influence on me. He and I have similar musical backgrounds, but I veered into Celtic fiddling,” she said. When her brother began playing electric violin with the rock-reggae band Zox a few years back, “it totally changed their sound,” she said. “It was different than anything I could have imagined, and very inspiring to me,” Ms Swain said.

Performing with bar bands, as young as 17 (she is in her late twenties now), was a time of musical growth for her, as well, she said.

“Up until then, I played mostly Cape Briton and classical violin. Then I got into the rock band covers that I had never played before, and I learned to jam and play with other musicians,” said Ms Swain.

Brown Bird, originating with Mr Lamb, has been in existence since 2003, said Ms Swain, and has gone through several transformations. When she met up with Mr Lamb for a mini tour in Virginia, the summer of 2008, he was performing solo, the other band members having left shortly before that.

“I was playing with a band, Barn Burning, in Rhode Island at the time. I sat in with Dave in Virginia,” a gig that went pretty well, she said. “The last show of his tour was in Rhode Island. I asked him if he wanted a fiddle player, he said yes, I quit my job…” and the newest incarnation of Brown Bird was born. It was not long, Ms Swain added, before the two performers merged their professional and private lives.

While slowly gathering a following, Brown Bird has kept busy. Two winters ago, they opened for Low Anthem on a European tour, and have only recently returned to their Rhode Island home after a three and a half month tour as the opening act for the Under Mountain String Band, Trampled By Turtles, and Devil Makes Three (in which brother Spencer is involved).

“We’re pretty excited, too,” said Ms Swain, “to be on the main stage of the Newport Folk Festival this year, the end of July.”

Other New England appearances are on the schedule for Brown Bird, she said, before the pair departs at the end of August for a West Coast tour.

The Devil Dancing (2009) was the first of Brown Bird’s albums to include MorganEve Swain, and was recorded with three of the band’s original members — Lamb, and Jeremy and Jerusha Robinson, as well as Mike Samos. The album also features Micah Blue Smaldone on upright bass, prior to Ms Swain taking up that instrument. The five-piece band toured briefly. As the Brown Bird duo, Ms Swain and Mr Lamb have released the album Salt for Salt (2011), on Supply & Demand Music label. The audience at the August 3 “Live at the Edmond Town Hall” concert will hear works from both albums, as well as new pieces. That may include one of the songs Ms Swain loves for its challenge and “rule bending,” the instrumental piece “Shiloh.”

“I think that piece is up there, for both of us,” said Ms Swain, without actually picking a favorite from their broad repertoire of songs. “A favorite? There is not one, really. It changes, week to week,” she admitted.

She and Mr Lamb are looking forward to their return to Newtown, said Ms Swain. “We are really excited to be performing in Newtown. I love it! I think what Hayden [Bates, producer of “Live at Edmond Town Hall” series to support restoration projects at the old town hall] is doing is awesome. I think it’s going to be great,” she said, “to be back in Newtown.”

To listen to tracks from Brown Bird, visit www.Facebook.com/brownbirdmusic or visit brownbird.net.

Tickets for the 7 pm concert at Edmond Town Hall, Friday, August 3, can be purchased at edmondtownhall.org, for $19.99 per ticket, plus $5.01 Theater Restoration fee (total $25).