Swamp Dogg – Sorry You Couldn’t Make It
Joyful Noise Recordings – 6 March 2020
For those who’ve listened to his music over the years, Swamp Dogg putting out a country album, Sorry You Couldn’t Make It, may seem a bit surprising. As Jerry Williams tells it the story makes an incredible amount of sense, “My granddaddy he just bought country records out the asshole. Every Friday when he came home from the Navy yard he’d stop off and get his records, like Mule Train by Frankie Lane, or Riders in the Sky by Vaughn Monroe.” While the Dogg is responsible for classic albums like Surfing In Harlem and Total Destruction To Your Mind, he knows his way around country. He and Gary U.S. Bonds wrote Johnny Paychecks country hit Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got) back in 1971.
Polica’s Ryan Olson produced Sorry You Couldn’t Make It with a crack band including the likes of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, Jenny Lewis, Channy Leaneagh and Chris Beirdent also from Polica, and Sam Amidon. Vernon’s piano is brought to the fore on the opening cut, Sleeping Without You Is A Dragg, while Lewis and Leaneagh add backing vocals to his achingly mournful lyrics, “Laying her on my pillow, crying all night long, stereo is playing some sad, sad song. It’s a natural fact I can’t live like that. Sleeping without is a dragg.”
Getting an update, Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got) makes you shudder as Williams begs his friend not to steal his woman. Funky as all get out, Family Pain recounts a tale of addiction with a guitar solo crackling with shuddering energy. The first of two John Prine duets, Memories, complete with phasing stretches the edges of country, creating a psychedelic sound not usually heard in Nashville. The tour de force vocals of I’d Rather Be Your Used To Be play to the range of emotions the Dogg can wring out of his material, in this case, a cheating woman.
Closing the album, another duet with Prine, Please Let Me Go Round Again, is a song that Swamp Dogg demoed when the seventy-seven-year-old was in his forties. A plea to get one more chance at life to do all the things he can do better now, it’s a perfect way to lower the curtain between two old friends. He hadn’t seen Prine since 1968, but just from listening to the song you can tell how easy it was for these singers to bridge the years.
Swamp Dogg is a force of nature; his music is often wild and unruly, with a voice that crackles with emotion. Sorry You Couldn’t Make It illustrates just how incredible he can be. There is magic in these tracks. It is an album not to be missed!
Order via Amazon | Joyful Noise
Photo Credit: David McMurry