NEWS UPDATES

Swing Caravan with The Fishtank Ensemble

Iron Horse Music Hall
Northampton, MA
August 16th, 7pm
$13 door

In the last year and a half Swing Caravan has won the Falcon Ridge Emerging Artist showcase and played concerts at Club Passim, Cafe Lena, Old Colony Woodstock, Green River Fesitval, Brooklyn Djangology Festival...and back to Falcon Ridge as featured artists. Reputation growing. Music evolving. Join us!

Big news is that we are wrapping up a busy year of gigs with recording a new CD!!

The new CD will be a collection of music from the WWII era. It will also feature a Spring 2011 version of Swing Caravan with Dave Nelson on drum kit (yep, he's back!), Julia Kay on bass, and some electric guitar playing from me. (Doug is off on a national book tour with his New York Times best-selling-author wife. Jack Brown is resting up from our busiest band days and planning a new project where he will continue to pump out those great gypsy jazz rhythms). Our new sound is sparse with open textures, fluid rhythms, conversational improv, and more interpretive takes of Django and the American standards.

I've always loved a bunch of the lesser-known songs that were popular in the WWII days of economic recovery and hardships. The sounds of longing for love and home…these tunes have resonated even more deeply for me in recent times as I look around at our own set of troubles in the world. More on that later.

You can hear us working up the new tunes on Friday nights at the Yellow Sofa Café when we are not travelling out of town. Check out our calendar here!

Peace,
Matthew

Welcome to the new Swing Caravan Website!!

It's A Good Life
We've had a busy and great year of gigs and recording. We're loving our new regular gig every Friday at the Yellow Sofa Café and Bar in Northampton. Our first CD, get it fresh, will be out in July and we're already at work on a follow-up for a late fall release. Swing Caravan will be three years old in a couple months and it feels like we're coming into our own, partly due to the regular presence of Michael Dunning on bass. He's the Scottish bassist you may have heard with us, not yet permanent but it's a regular thing. You know, we're still dating.

Slam it, Jack!
We recorded get it fresh in four studio sessions, just 12 hours to get more than we needed on tape. Of course, all the instrumental tracks were played together in real time, the goal being to keep our group personality in tact. The intro to one fast tune caught Dave egging Jack on with "Slam it, Jack!" in the headphones. Yep, that'll make it to the CD. Some other comments from Dave won't... There are some rough mix samples of tunes here on the media page. And, yes, get it fresh will include our original tune "Swing Flower"!

Join Us
Thanks to everyone for coming out to share in the music with us. It's great to see an expanding community supporting what we do. We're ready, artistically and commercially, for bigger things. If you have ideas or contacts for venues, radio, reviews, etc. please send us an email from the contact page.

Peace,
Matthew