Let’s Dance
LOCAL DAVID BOWIE TRIBUTE BAND, SWEAR AND SHAKE FROM NASHVILLE PLAY REVELRY ROOM THIS WEEKEND
Kari Spieler makes singing look effortless. Her rich tone, in combination with an easy stage presence, can silence an audience with heart-breaking ballads only to sweep them back on their feet to dance along with the next song.
With bandmates Adam McHeffey and Shaun Savage, the trio performs as Swear and Shake, an indie folk band based out of Nashville.
Swear and Shake has opened for The Lumineers, Delta Rae, American Authors, G. Love and Special Sauce, ZZ Ward and Greensky Bluegrass. Friday night, June 30, they’ll be in Chattanooga to perform at Revelry Room. Monday Night Social will open.
Though both Spieler and McHeffey performed regularly around the campus of State University of New York-Purchase College, it wasn’t until the final weeks of their senior year in 2010 that they met and recorded “Johnnie,” a song Swear and Shake performs to this day.
The demo of “Johnnie” began to circulate, finding its way to Savage, who played bass with McHeffey all through high school.
In 2012, Swear and Shake released its debut album “Maple Ridge.” The band’s campaign to fund the record through Kickstarter exceeded its goal by $750. The record gained attention from notable independent music blogs. My Old Kentucky Blog featured Swear and Shake in its New Band Smell section, and The Blue Indian named Swear and Shake its Band of the Month for December 2012.
After two years of touring, the band packed up their Brooklyn apartments and headed for Nashville in 2014. When asked about that relocation in an interview for Nashville Lifestyles Magazine, Spieler replied, “You’d leave for tour and then come back to your part-time job at Anthropologie … I’d literally be picking pants off the floor, and people would recognize me from playing Bowery Ballroom the night before.” Spieler sings of that experience in “Blouses.” In 2016, Swear and Shake ran a second crowd-funding campaign for “The Sound of Letting Go,” the band’s second full-length set of recordings. It was recorded in Richmond, Va., at Spacebomb Studios.
Revelry Room’s performances jump from indie folk on Friday to the pop music of David Bowie on Saturday, July 1, when Diamond Dogs presents its David Bowie Tribute. The band of local all-stars covers all Bowie’s hits from “Space Oddity” to “Let’s Dance.”