FILM SCREENING, Q&A + PERFORMANCE BY SWAMP DOGG
ABOUT THE FILM
Hidden away deep in the suburban San Fernando Valley, legendary cult musician Swamp Dogg, alongside housemates Moogstar and Guitar Shorty, has transformed his home into an artistic playground. This documentary film follows the group as they navigate the tumultuous waves of the music industry, and forge a wonderfully bizarre and inspiring path across time and space.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
“Not a lot of people talk about the true origins of bluegrass music, but it came from Black people. The banjo, the washtub, all that stuff started with African Americans. We were playing it before it even had a name.” – Swamp Dogg
Born Jerry Williams, Jr., Swamp Dogg first encountered bluegrass music on the radio growing up in Portsmouth, VA, in the 1940s. Though he would go on to spend much of the ’50’s and ’60s immersed in the world of soul, funk, and R&B—both as an artist and as a A&R man/producer working with the likes of Patti LaBelle, The Commodores, and The Drifters—roots music would remain an important fixture in his life. By that time, Williams had already traded in his birth name for the Swamp Dogg moniker, partly as an act of rebellion against the confining racial and commercial politics of the music industry, and partly as an embrace of his natural inclination towards irreverence and eccentricity. Beginning with 1970’s Total Destruction To Your Mind, Swamp Dogg would go on to release a string of more than two dozen albums ranging from the radically subversive to the downright ridiculous, developing an underground following in the process that would make fans of everyone from DMX to John Prine. Critics and audiences alike would eventually come to see Swamp Dogg for the visionary he was. The New York Times praised his “salty, earthy Southern-soul storytelling;” Rolling Stone hailed his catalog full of “classics that have influenced generations of younger musicians;” The Independent dubbed him a “psychedelic soul original;” The Fader declared him a “legend;” Pitchfork called him “one of pop’s great cult acts;” and Vice crowned him “the unsung king of soul music.”
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