The Black Swans make music steeped in folk, country, and blues, avoiding genre and categorization, albeit the ones known as "good" or "real-deal".

Who Will Walk in the Darkness with You?, was the debut album released by Delmore Recording Society in 2004 to lots of really good and really bad reviews. It dives deep into a pond of existential doubt and functions as a collection of musical vignettes where characters negotiate how to get along in the world with and without the person to whom they feel closest. Rarely acknowledging gender, the lyrics have a purposeful drift, playing out strained, washed-out moments similar to early Kris Kristofferson or the confessional fragments of Robert Creeley. Guilt and doubt run through the songs, but they are ultimately ethereal and elegiac. The songs are dialogues, existential and gray, spoken when the clock ticks slow; their subjects are companionship, intimacy and resigned acceptance.

The Sex Brain E.P. was released March of 2006 on Bwatue Records, their own little fake-label named after the A-side of the Phil Ochs 45 on A&M that he recorded in Kenya. It means “Canoe” in Swahili. The E.P. is a high concept, five-song cycle which examines the tragi-comic throes of intimacy concerning the deep and dark psychological-sexual tug-of-war between our superego and id without Freud’s referee, the ego, anywhere in sight. Disturbing, funny, and completely unrepressed, Sex Brain subjects itself to casual intimacy (“I.D.W. 2 F.”), the dangers and highs of aphrodisiac (“Friends”), masturbation (“Your Hands”), hetero bed death (“Dark Plums”), and the anxieties and joys that a meaningful relationship can acquire (“My Lips”). It shares a similar unresolved emotional landscape and “erotic realism” found in Leonard Cohen, Lars Von Trier, Donald Hall, Nicolas Roeg, and Ovid’s Amores.

Change! is the aptly titled new album to be released by La Société Expéditionnaire, fall 2007. A dozen slow burning songs dealing with the reconciliation and reconstruction of the spirit and self. As in the past, The Black Swans feature the broken broodings of songwriter/singer/guitarist Jerry DeCicca, and the classical, Appalachian swoop of Noel Sayre’s violin. The artwork was provided by members Arc, a community developmental art workshop (video). To fund the finishing touches, DeCicca supplemented his Abe Lincoln balloon-animal children's party gig (aka Doctor Silverfoot) and took a job for 3 months as an afternoon DJ at a strip club.

Over the last few years The Black Swans have played many shows, fun and pointless, with some of their favorite musicians: Michael Hurley, Richard Buckner, the Schramms, Jeb Loy Nichols, Damon & Naomi, Rebecca Gates, Okkervil River, Mark Eitzel, Lewis & Clarke, and other good people. Stops included SXSW, CMJ, NXNE, along with self-booked tours of the US. They always travel in a ’95 Ford Taurus. New radiator, new transmission, new battery, new starter, new used tires, 140,000 miles, never say die.

In late June 2007, DeCicca co-produced the first new recordings by 1970's Monument recording artist, Larry Jon Wilson. Wilson was featured in the cult documentary Heartworn Highways that also include early portraits of Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. These new recordings took place in Perdido Key, Florida. It will be released with a companion DVD about the making of the album in early 2008 on UK label 1965 Records/Sony.

The Black Swans live in the wondrous Columbus, Ohio.
 

send e-mail to:
theblackswansband@gmail.com