The Devil Dancing 10th Anniversary LP

by Brown Bird

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setnetradio did not discover the music of Brown Bird until pretty recently-- I'm still processing that, sadly, David Lamb is no longer with us.-have played every track from this release on my radio program--great stuff-highly recommended.

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Full Digital Discography

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Get all 15 Brown Bird releases available on Bandcamp and save 15%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Live at Machines With Magnets 3/24/2011 LP, Live From Newport, Xmas EP '15-'20, The Devil Dancing 10th Anniversary LP, European Tour Donation EP, Tautology, Avalon, The Water Street Demos, and 7 more. , and , .

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The Devil Dancing 10th Anniversary LP
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Remixed by Seth Manchester and remastered by Dave Cooley.

Vinyl comes digital download of record.

Includes unlimited streaming of The Devil Dancing 10th Anniversary LP via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	Danger and Dread 03:45	info
2.	Down to the River 02:44	info
3.	Muck and Mire 04:28	info
4.	Lake Bed 03:30	info
5.	Needy Generator 02:45	info
6.	Wrong Black Mare 03:05	info
7.	Bottom of the Bottle 03:30	info
8.	By the Reins 03:09	info
9.	Gallows 02:36	info
10.	Sickle and Hood 02:39	info
11.	Severed Soul 03:01	info
12.	Devil Dancing 03:28	info
13.	Mabel Grey 03:18	info

about

**Physical LP will come with a digital download card**

This record commemorates the beginning- and continuation- of a love story. We used to joke that it wasn’t truly “love at first sight” because at our first meeting Dave’s eyes were closed- asleep on the couch of mutual friends in Roanoke Virginia. It was the summer of 2008, and Dave, then 30 years old and performing solo under the name Brown Bird, was living out of an old green Acura that used to belong to his sister while he traveled across the US with a guitar, a banjo and a one-man-band percussion rig. I, on the other hand, was a naive 23 year old violinist playing in a band called Barn Burning and dreaming of driving across the country. Brown Bird and Barn Burning met in Roanoke to share a handful of shows up the East Coast, and our connection was immediate; the course of our life together set from the start.
After that tour, we parted ways briefly while Dave battled with his demons and traveled and wrote. That September he emailed me: “want to go to burlington sometime? i've got an open invitation to play at a place up there. also that house that does shows in biddeford called hogfarm studios said that i could join any of their shows that i wanted to. i miss you. i wish you could hear this song. i think it's actually kind of happy sounding (for me).” The song’s working title was “The Devil’s Voice”.
I responded to Dave’s email by sending him a home-recorded song I’d written for him: “Severed Soul”, and less than a year later, he’d convinced me that it should be on our record.
To talk about Brown Bird is to talk about love. Before me, the band had consisted of Dave’s longtime friends Jerusha Neely and Jeremy Robinson, and the bond between the three of them was unbreakable, even in 2007 when Dave’s bandmates stayed behind while he embarked on what he intended to be a perpetual tour around the US. By autumn of 2008, Dave and I had moved in together. By that winter, Jeremy and Jerusha had rejoined Dave and I, along with Mike Samos, as the band Brown Bird. In our Warren, RI kitchen, the five of us worked out the arrangements of twenty songs, bringing to them vocal harmonies, cellos, fiddle, dobro, accordion, and banjo. Over several sessions in Portland and at Hogfarm Studios in Biddeford Maine, we recorded thirteen tracks, enlisting Micah Blue Smaldone on upright bass and engineer Ron Harrity of Peapod Recordings. The collection of songs that became The Devil Dancing spanned the evolution of the band and our love story by addressing themes of spirituality, good and evil, darkness, and of course, love. Working as a five-piece band in those early days was joyous, though ultimately unsustainable. Even in the studio we discovered the challenge of capturing so many instruments, determined as we were to record them live. The outcome was a record that felt and sounded fuller than anything Dave had done to date, yet lacking some of the depth we’d hoped would come across- the scratching of Jeremy’s fingers on the banjo head; the eerieness of a whistled line, the heaviness of upright bass and cello.
As an artist, presenting the best he was capable of was immensely important to Dave. It kept him challenging himself, always evolving and never satisfied. This year marks the 10th Anniversary of this record- the first we made together, the last we made as a quintet. Hearing the remixed version of it for the first time, I had the sensation that a door had opened and instead of listening to a memory, I was back in our kitchen. I am certain that Dave would be proud of this new outcome. It’s my gift to him, and ours to you.
In March of 2009, I emailed Dave:
You are asleep next to me. I was going to just send you an email that says you are beautiful, but then I found this old email in one of my folders, and it made me smile, so I thought I'd send it along to you. Why haven't we gone to Burlington yet? Also, I'm glad you went with "the devil dancing".

I love you.

-MorganEve Swain, November 2019

credits

released December 31, 2019

All songs written by David Lamb
except "Severed Soul", written by
MorganEve Swain

All songs arranged by Brown Bird

Originally recorded January-August 2009 at
Hogfarm Studios & Peapod Recordings
by Ron Harrity with special thanks to Gil and Coco

Remixed by Seth Manchester at Machines With Magnets
Remastered by Dave Cooley at Elysian Masters

Artwork by MorganEve Swain with special thanks to
Mikael Kennedy

Layout by Ken Swain

Sickle & Hood Comic by Logan Riley

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Brown Bird Providence, Rhode Island

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