SWAMPDAWAMP: Rock This Country

(2009, Big Penny Entertainment) www.swampdawamp.com

What’s in a name? In the case of SWAMPDAWAMP, you just don’t know. I would’ve went with SWAMPDAWG, personally, it uses most of the letters and it seems to fit SWAMPDAWAMP’s country-rock sound. In fact, they could take the word “This” out of their album title; “Rock Country” is what SWAMPDAWAMP is all about. There’s the eagle and the flag on the CD cover, and there’s the songs…”American Man”, “Welcome To The Inn”, “Lady”, “Six Tons”, “Daddy Said”, each offering a down-home slice of honky-tonk. Truckers ought to snatch up this CD by the thousands. SWAMPDAWAMP injects Country themes (work, whiskey and women, y’all come back now) into a more upbeat rock format that almost any typical Country performer could use to sell a hell of a lot more albums. Electric instead of acoustic guitars (by Keith Inman and Michael Hough), Mike “Scooby” Huffman’s boogie piano and Gig Michael’s vocals with the low chuckle of Dr. Hook are way more fun than the slow, heartrending crooning of ‘regular’ Country, so Country fans ought to be pleasantly surprised with SWAMPDAWAMP. On the rock side, however, the band falls a bit short. There are six band members, so they could rock harder if they wanted to. Lynyrd Skynyrd, .38 Special and even Charlie Daniels rock harder than SWAMPDAWAMP. There are no truly fast songs or exciting or memorable solos, so fans of heavier Americana like Molly Hatchet or Blackfoot will probably think “Rock This Country? Call me back when you do.” The only other criticism is that “Half My Life” (“Spent half my life rollin’ pennies into dimes”) should appear before “American Man”, so that cheerful anthem will rescue listeners from the stark truth of the earlier song. SWAMPDAWAMP might not be able to “Rock This Country” the way Aerosmith or Van Halen has, but they’ve put Rock into Country, making for an unassailably cool CD.