Swamp Dogg has solely simply stopped seeing monsters. Since being spiked with LSD again within the Sixties, which additionally influenced his distinct tackle left-field soul music, the 82-year-old says he may nonetheless really feel the impacts of it up till just some years in the past. “I was paranoid of crowds and paranoid of being alone,” he says. “I had high anxiety and could be sitting in a room with you and if I looked at you long enough, you’d start looking like some kind of monster.”
For a protracted time period it was solely by means of the assistance and assist of his late spouse that he was capable of maintain it collectively. “I didn’t trust but one person in life, and that was Yvonne,” he says. “I wouldn’t do anything without her. She’s why I’m still alive. Yvonne was my god.” There are equally touching sentiments expressed about her within the offbeat, humorous and surprisingly poignant new documentary concerning the cult artist and his curious world: Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted.
Swamp Dogg is a musician like few others. Part golden-voiced crooner, half experimental satirist, half flat-out oddball, he has made music that spans soul, rock, nation, disco, R&B and Auto-Tune boogie. Growing up in Virginia, he minimize his first report when he was simply 12 as Little Jerry Williams. He did A&R and manufacturing work for main labels and went on to jot down songs for Gene Pitney, Doris Duke and Johnny Paycheck. Feeling burned out, unfairly handled and annoyed by the trade, in addition to chemically altered from his LSD experiences, he rebranded as Swamp Dogg in 1970. From then on he launched into a way more singular musical trajectory that fused the madcap peculiarities of Frank Zappa with a deep love of old-fashioned soul and nation.
Since then he has labored with Bon Iver, been a supervisor and mentor to the World Class Wreckin’ Cru, which featured a younger Dr Dre, and he’s offered novelty information of canine singing – effectively, barking – Beatles songs to pet outlets in Spain. His report covers – resembling him stuffing himself bare inside an enormous scorching canine – commonly function on lists of worst ever album sleeves. The album cowl to 1971’s Rat On!, of him driving an enormous white rat, can also be painted on the underside of his swimming pool (therefore the title of the movie). And there may be additionally a latest cookbook he’s written that he describes as “an idea 50 years in the making”. If You Can Kill It I Can Cook It options soul meals recipes resembling Baked Beans Bo Diddley.
“I guess I do feel like I am eccentric,” he says with a chuckle when requested if he agrees with the outline that always follows him round. “Although I pull back on a lot of things that I know are crazier than a motherfucker.”
Pulling again is one thing that doesn’t at all times come simply to Swamp Dogg. Back within the Nineteen Seventies he joined Jane Fonda’s anti-Vietnam Free the Army tour and he feels it set him again years within the trade. “I’m trying not to be as political,” he says. “I’m still a little political but not as much because it backfired. It got me thrown off of Elektra records and that’s what stopped people from wanting to do live interviews with me on radio and television.” Does he have any regrets about how he approached that? “I would do it the same again but I would do it harder,” he says. “But with more backup this time. Because before it was like I called a meeting and nobody showed up for it.”
Despite a turbulent profession that, for essentially the most half, has seen him confined to the fringes, he appears like he’s landed in a candy spot relating to carving out an area from autonomy and idiosyncrasy. He stays prolific too, having launched three albums within the final 5 years. “More people seem to know me now than ever before and I still feel like I’m cooking,” he says. “Some concerts I play and I see all these people coming in and [there’s that many] it’s like they must be thinking Snoop Dogg is going to be here. I love the audience so much. I’m so happy to play for them. It makes me want to work like a motherfucker.”
So what retains him so motivated and hard-working at an age when many, after 70 years within the trade, would gladly be fascinated about retirement? “Poverty,” he says, bluntly. “I think about poverty and I get dizzy. Laying in bed watching television, and all of a sudden, you realise I ain’t had no money coming in for a couple of months. That drives me. The thought of being poor makes me want to work because being poor will get your ass no matter what age you are. There’s no sympathy for octogenarians.”
One of the actually shifting components concerning the documentary is the home state of affairs that he has at residence. In a neighbourhood in Los Angeles the place they joke that each one the porn movies are shot, he has neighbours resembling Johnny Knoxville and Mike Judge who swing by, and he lives along with his mates and musical collaborators Guitar Shorty and MoogStar. “Guitar Shorty came here for a couple of months and it turned into 18 years,” he says. Swamp Dogg by no means charged him a penny in lease. “Because I’ve been there,” he says. “I’ve slept on people’s couches and on their front porch and all that kind of shit. I’ve been all the way down to the bottom. But I would always find a way out because I don’t like not having nice things, even when you can’t afford them.” One such instance of this tendency is illustrated within the movie when he was at the height of success and owned 9 vehicles. “I thought the world would become mine,” he displays of that interval.
You get a way that the corporate and camaraderie of his buddies, bandmates and housemates have changed the deep loss felt over his spouse. He concurs with this, earlier than joking: “and they also never looked like monsters to me”. Sadly, Guitar Shorty has since died, together with one other buddy and collaborator, John Prine, who additionally seems within the movie. “I guess I’m next,” he says. “But I’m trying to walk a straight line and do the things that keep me healthy and my mind, and my whole being, happy. I try to eat right, don’t drink, don’t do drugs …” he stops himself. “Damn, you might say I’m boring as a motherfucker.”
In actuality, Swamp Dogg is something however. And you get the sense that he’s beginning to realise that embracing eccentricity, and making music purely on his personal phrases, whereas forging a really distinctive profession path, has maybe paid dividends. “I’m happy that I’ve stayed true to myself,” he says. “And I’ve got a lot of faith in what I do and I want to leave a hell of a legacy. That’s why I cut so many albums. I’ll take a shot and hope it works out. It seems to be working.”
