MySpace a place for friends

As Punk celebrates its 30th birthday, the musical trajectories it inspired still continue to criss cross the genres in a most fantastic way. No more so than in the case of this artist and this record. Swill (his original punk name) is Philip Odgers and 28 years ago he stood onstage in an electric blue suit and leopard skin shirt as his first band Catch 22 supported the Clash on the infamous 16 Tons tour.

Now, stepping out from the shadows of his other life as one half of the vocal attack in legendary UK folk rockers The Men They Couldn't Hang, Swill has made his own record and infused it with the age old punk ethos of DIY. All of his trademark passions are present; Americana, folk, Celtic rhythm, blue eyed pop and country. Imagine Glen Campbell, Kirsty MacColl and late period Joe Strummer all rolled into one and backed by the best little picking band this side of the bayou.

The Swaggerband, friends accumulated after half a life on the road, are Ricky and Jon from TMTCH on bass and drums, Tom Spencer (son of the late, great John B. Spencer) on mandolins and banjos, Bobby Valentino (Dylan, Tom Petty) a Clark Gable lookalike and fiddle player and the eerily named Ashley Halloween on guitar.

This deeply personal set of songs veers joyfully from instrumental to a cappella, from epic balladry to small town observation, from hoedown to hop. Elvis Lives Here creates a new kind of genre with its intimate fables of a local kind of life.

Track list, which include different versions of some of the songs on the EP, is as follows:

* Drag You Down
* Just A Dial Tone Away
* In The Breeze
* Elvis Lives Here
* Missing
* The Drinkers
* Give 'Em Enough Hope
* World of Discontent
* Shed Fire
* Deep Blue Sea
* Marjory & Johnny

The album also name checks everyone that bought the EP in advance from the website.

ALL TRACKS ON THE NEW ALBUM WERE RECORDED AT BUSH STUDIOS, SHEPHERDS BUSH, LONDON IN MID 2005 AND EARLY 2006. ABOUT HALF THE RECORDINGS ARE LIVE STUDIO RECORDINGS. ONLY ACOUSTIC INSTRUMENTS WERE USED.

VARIOUS FRIENDS AND COHORTS PROVIDED LYRICS AND THESE ARE AS FOLLOWS:

THE WORDS TO 'IN THE BREEZE', 'MISSING' AND 'THE DRINKERS' ARE BY SWILL'S PARTNER IN CRIME FROM THE MEN THEY COULDN'T HANG - PAUL SIMMONDS.

'ELVIS LIVES HERE' AND 'MARJORY AND JOHNNY' ARE BY LIKE MINDED THINKER AND FOLK LEGEND ROBB JOHNSON

PUNK POET ATTILA THE STOCKBROKER PENNED THE LYRICS TO 'SHED FIRE'

ALL THE TUNES ARE PUBLISHED BY 'SUITS YOU MUSIC' AND WERE WRITTEN BY SWILL AS WERE THE WORDS TO 'DRAG YOU DOWN', 'JUST A DIAL TONE AWAY', 'WORLD OF DISCONTENT' AND 'DEEP BLUE SEA'.

The new Swaggerband album is available from the following shops:

UK:
HMV
Amazon.co.uk
Virgin Megastores
Tesco
Play.com
Townsend Records

Sweden:
www.megastore.se

Portugal:
CD GO

Holland:
Lapis Electronics

USA:
Tower Record

Japan:
HMV

Or for those outside the UK the album is available directly from TMTCH's merchandise shop:
TMTCH Mail Order for 11.00 pound sterling to anyone in Europe or 12.00 pound sterling to the rest of the world including shipping cost. Orders can be made via PayPal by clicking on this button to orders@tmtch.net or via this order form.
Please note that payment via snail mail can only be accepted in pound sterling!

Swill and the Swaggerband for download:

Swill's EP "Doh, Ray, ME-ME-Me-me-me" is now available to download from iTunes as well as Woven Wheat Whispers.
Swill and the Swaggerband's album "The Day After" can be found at the same location at Woven Wheat Whispers. There is also free instrumental EP to download there!!! And several albums by The Men They Couldn't Hang, Liberty Cage, Odgers & Simmonds, etc. etc.

Why did I decide to do some 'solo' stuff? Well, let's go back in time a little. 2004 was a landmark year for The Men They Couldn't Hang's. It was our 20th anniversary. In those two decades 10 albums (including one live and two compilations) had been released. Countless gigs had been performed. This whole process also provided the added benefits of travelling to places, and meeting people, that we would never have seen if it hadn't been for the band. Being in TMTCH covers a wide range of emotions and experiences. We are close like a family and we always like to make the most of what we find. As a reviewer of a gig we played as part of the International Guitar Festival of Great Britain (The Wirral, 2004) aptly puts it "TMTCH are not so much of a band, as a way of life, having created a deep influential path for which its band members, former players and fans can follow. They are an exceptional group of musicians, an exceptional band, with an exceptional attitude towards music - exceptional!"

All well and good so far but it still doesn't answer the question 'why did I decide to do the solo stuff' does it?

Well, I love TMTCH and long may we continue. We're all still mates and the core of the band is the same as it was on that 1984 Easter Monday at The Alternative Country Festival in Camden. It's strange to look back at the line up from that day where, for the pricey sum of £4 you could see a bill the included: Poguemahone, Boothill Foot Tappers, Hackney Five-O Cut Loose, The Blubbery Hellbellies and the svelte, fresh-faced and recently formed The Men They Couldn't Hang.

This was the birth of a significant music scene that would send ripples round the world. However, for various and complex reasons, the only band that has survived intact has been TMTCH.

To say that it playing in a band like TMTCH is an emotional experience would be a massive understatement. On a long tour, privacy is a luxury, nights are long and the back of the tour bus smells like a yak's arse on a bad day.

When it comes to the music, everyone in the band has his own variations on a theme. There is common ground, of course, but we all have our own particular favourites. It makes for a great melting pot when it comes to songwriting and recording and, in my opinion, this is what gives TMTCH such a unique flavour.

Although highly productive, this method of working inevitably means that certain songs get overlooked because they just don't sit right with everyone involved. This was one of the main reasons that I wanted to record something that I had complete control over. I didn't want to get distracted by the technology of a big studio, or a producer with a ponytail. For better or for worse I wanted to be responsible for the end sound and I wanted the end sound to be simple and lively. Also, to be honest, I couldn't really afford a big studio, or a producer. Ponytail or no ponytail.

Paul Simmonds, the lead guitarist and main songwriter with TMTCH, and I have been friends for even longer than we've been together in the band. We've also recorded and gigged side projects as 'Odgers & Simmonds', 'Liberty Cage' and, way back in the mists of time, 'Catch 22' ("before it catches you" as the old song goes).

I told Paul about my ideas and asked if he had any spare lyrics floating around that he would like me to put to music. So armed with half a dozen excellent sets of lyrics from Paul, a couple of covers (picked up from watching endless re-runs of 'Oh Brother Where Art Thou' and going to a few London Irish weddings over the years), two re-worked TMTCH songs and some of my own scribblings, I booked a small studio in Shepherd's Bush.

The plan for the album was a simple one: I spoke to several friends that I wanted to accompany me on the recording session and asked if they would like to be involved. The deal would be that I would send them the rough song-shapes and we would meet up at the studio a couple of weeks later. There would be no rehearsal: we'd simply run through the songs and record everything we played until we got the definitive version.

Oh, and all the instruments had to be acoustic.

So, who were these friends, these guest musicians?

Well, Ricky McGuire, bassist with TMTCH added his unique blend of highland and lowland malt bass to several tracks whilst my brother, Jon Odgers, who played on the first five TMTCH albums dusted off his drumsticks and played snare, bongos and any other small, defenceless percussion.

Tom Spencer, of Fast Lane Roogalator and sometime TMTCH tour manager, played guitar and banjo. Tom is a great guitarist and has been playing guitar for years but on this album he was playing banjo for the first time - literally!!

Jamie Mathews (who was recording on the Roogalators' album in another part of town) popped in and added some great harmonica. He also plays a tasty ukulele: that led to the uke and vocal version of 'In the Jailhouse Now'.

We also recruited the studio receptionist, Marsha Swanson, to join in on a little yodelling.

Next up was Bobby Valentino. Bobby was his usual brilliant self - possibly a tad brillianter! - he not only added some wondrous fiddle to six of the tracks but also played a mandolin that had belonged to his grandma, dates back to the 1800's and was bombed in the blitz and dug out of the rubble. It sounds magic though.

Last up was TMTCH roadie and neighbour Ashley Halloween (and yes that is his real name) who contributed some fine picking to 'The Flood' and 'Family Way' and surprised all of us, even himself, as this was his first time in a recording studio.

All the lead vocals were recorded live - which is very rare - as where most of the instruments. There's a kind of unspoken acceptance in the music business that very little is recorded live and most bands go along with that - even to the extent that most 'Live' albums you have heard will have been taken back to a recording studio and had almost all the instruments and vocals replaced (or at least patched up). It is not unknown for a live album to have barley anything from the gig left intact apart from the sound of the crowd - and there's a good chance that that will have been enhanced! I wanted to take the live feel to the other extreme insisting that didn't even rehearse these songs before the recording session. Wherever possible all the instruments were recorded at the same time tooalthough there were limits with some of us (Tom and Bobby to name but two) playing more than one instrument on some of the songs. This was very much the way I wanted to record - to capture the freshest performance and was something that we (TMTCH) had done, to some extent, on 'The Cherry Red Jukebox' but now I wanted to take it further.

The studio, beneath the Hammersmith and City tube line, is compact and not superbly soundproofed. In the same complex are several rehearsal rooms so this made recording tricky as the mics would not only pick up the odd sound from any particularly heavy trains rumbling overhead but also spill from bands in the other rooms (not all of who followed our 'acoustic instruments only' rule). All in all we had to time our takes carefully otherwise that meaningful fading hum of the last mandolin note would also pick up the thrash metal bassist in the adjacent room.

Following on in TMTCH tradition, each session had a large social element to it, there was always a bit of a party atmosphere pervading our studio space and I think this cuts through in the recordings. We would also follow each session by a visit to the local boozers or a meal in one of Shepherds Bush's finest eateries. Often on these occasions, after much patting of backs and mutual appreciation, we would get down to the subject of names for the 'backing band'. We spent one long and merry evening in 'The Light of Nepal' debating over the merits of 'Loaded Dice', 'Smoking Guns' and 'Loaded Guns' before finally settling on 'The Swaggerband'. The end result was the first album 'The Day After' by Swill and the Swaggerband which is available from the TMTCH merchandise store and at either The Men They Couldn't Hang or my own (very occasional) gigs.