Album Review: Swamp Dogg Contemplates the Afterlife by Swamp Dogg
Swamp Dogg’s first album for S-Curve, made at 83, swings from comic kiss-offs to a toddler’s grief. He plays both straight and sells every bit.
With 83 years of age, Jerry Williams Jr. made his debut record for S-Curve in Brooklyn, along with a collective of the live band and the production team whose other customers are a third of his age. Swamp Dogg is a multifaceted person who has written about war, financial struggles, and all the women who wronged him in his life, typically, with a punchline attached. However, this time the topic is death. For instance, one song tells about a guy who comes into $242 million and spends it on turning down the ex who left him broke; on the other hand, another song features a three-year-old girl asking her mother why there is a flag on her father’s casket. Swamp Dogg writes the punchline like the funeral scene.
The central message of the song “Searching for Heaven” is expressed through its chorus, which states: “If you’re searching for heaven, go home, go home.” The first verse presents its argument in a linear sequence of observations. A member of the household has not only known but also understood the traveller’s every traumatic experience, who, on a really bad day, said that the unconscious he was borderline insane; this same person rendered him assistance during the illness, and when he was overwhelmed with debt and potential eviction, he was the one who prevented his friend from ending his life. The following verse, which is about a child left waiting for a hug while the adult is out in a street wasting their collateral thought it was love, turns stately, colder than ice. Finally, Swamp Dogg ceases singing and straightforwardly presents the situation. He is a fabulous woman who loves him, kids are crazy about him, he has a job with a boss who likes him, and he is a man who has gone astray on the path of life. Everything that the song tells him he should find comes from the very house he’s in.
When the marriage comes to an end in “Unhappy Song,” Swamp Dogg reads the property aloud: “Take the plants, and I’ll keep the dog/You never liked him anyway.” Its chorus openly admits it, a song that’s intended for people to be happy, yet it is out of key by about a mile. “Hot to Trot” resolves its play with that lottery ticket. He answers the ex’s phone call, listens to her plead for coming back, reminds her he once paid tuition for her big-head kids, and sends her off with the news that her love maker has caught fire. The refusal in “Waka Waka Waka” first appears in childish talk after he catches her saying a stranger’s name in her sleep, and then turns into a warning that the rabbits have the gun.
The story of “A Million Tears Ago” gets the benefits of the desertions of two desertions only. A Sunday paraded a woman in the dress of a special waitress, got in his Cadillac, and left him with just a pink slip; his citizenship was claimed by the country, he was sent to fight wars worldwide, which the people at home did not care about, and he was sent back home to live in empty rooms and a flag that he did not get to have in his honor.
He connects them both in the chorus part, “You and my country, you both turned away,” then the bridge flies from him into nothingness: “Help me, somebody/I’m drownin’, but they still pourin’ water on me.” The song finishes with the man reiterating that he is not looking for sympathy. He showed gratitude to Gary U.S. Bonds for being there to sing on the “Waka Waka Waka” and mentions that he is the best friend he ever had, thereby ending a long estrangement with him in just a few plain sentences. In “Final Approach,” the man who has scandalized all the hidden betrayals gleefully says that he has never been happier, the phone calls have ceased, and the credit collectors are finally gone.
The kid in “Daddy’s Little Girl,” who is three years old, has remained serious. SpongeBob is no longer able to make her smile, and Mickey Mouse, the one who was her entire universe, is now just a simple toy with no value to her. The little girl is now only able to see the moon at night by sitting on his lap and crying about him, asking her when he will come back. The second chapter indicates the coffin. He has returned from Afghanistan, but a fool shot her dad on the street. However, she is too little to hear and understand all of this. The cartoons and the coffin are parts of the same little life. Every Sunday, she sends a balloon to heaven with a message attached to it saying, “Love you, Daddy, from your little girl,” and on the rest of the days, she kisses his picture, talks about him to Jesus, and explains his personality every night before sleep.
The two covers are penned by Jenny Lewis and John Prine, and they are the only songs not composed by Swamp Dogg himself, who indeed opted for both very cleverly. “Acid Tongue” by Lewis dates back to 2008, and it shows the narrator’s perspective of a cobbler who is offering to fix a hole in him and says, “I’m not looking for a cure.” He then continues to say that nobody helps a liar. Among Swamp Dogg’s own tales of misspent love and bad luck, she is also among them. The humor at the gallows is obtained from the piece Prine’s “Please Don’t Bury Me,” written in 1973. A man wakes up, puts on his slippers, ambles into the kitchen, and dies, then he spends the rest of the song doing an auction from heaven, in which he is giving away his stomach to Milwaukee, in case the beer runs out and his arms to the Venus de Milo, before he sends his mouth south to kiss the world goodbye.
Despite the humor and the sadness, “Knock Knock (Memories)” tells a story about a man who is up too late with a company he did not call for. He has tried closing the door, but the memories are the ones that do not have any keys and they do not knock at all. They are the ones who have not invited themselves; they are the ones who have entered. It is two hours past midnight, and the old one is back, a cold northern wind through the room. These days, he hardly gets any sleep. It is by the next night that it has discovered the door once more.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Searching for Heaven,” “A Million Tears Ago,” “Daddy’s Little Girl”