Swamp Rat (CD)

SWAMP RAT
Swamp Rat (2008)

FEATURING SAM BUSH, TRACY BYRD, STEVE WARINER, JOHNNY NEEL, AND PAUL DEAKIN (OF THE MAVERICKS).

Swamp Rat is: James Cook (bass), Dan Cohen (guitar, vocals), Derek Mixon (drums)

Hear samples at MySpace or ReverbNation.com!

There’s a retro sound to Swamp Rat’s tunes: bachelor pad music on one track is followed by something that sounds like Jeff Beck stuck his chocolate in Bob Wills’s peanut butter.  “Take Her Out of Texas” has Wills’s swing, and in a review, Bob Oermann says that guest vocalist Tracy Byrd “sounds born to do this style.”  “I’m Leaving at 5”--coming in at exactly five minutes--pays homage in its title and structure to Dave Brubeck, except that it’s Grammy nominee Johnny Neel on keys and Sam Bush picking up the Latin feel on mandolin.  “Nose Whistlin’” steals its title from a George Carlin routine, but it would be hard to find just one source for Dan Cohen’s guitar magic on this track.

“Better Let Go” has been garnering astonished responses from hardened blues fans for months in the preview version the band offers on its MySpace page.  And “Back on the Farm” is almost straight country; Cohen and Wariner on vocals and Wariner on electric guitar lay down a happy, homey feel, but the New Orleans-style horns give it the “second-line country” feel that is emerging as Cohen’s signature.

The eclecticism of this record extends to its production--and not just the surprising, clanky creepiness of “Stella II” or the stunning tone in the guitar solos in “Twitchy” and “Klezmer Magic,” but to the CD packaging itself.  Swamp Rat’s art was done by cult favorite and Mad Magazine artist Marc Hempel, and its story was written by a well-known comic writer, Allan Gross (Tarzan, Doctor Cyborg).