Swamp Dogg to release album featuring Justin Vernon
Jerry Williams Jr. was feeling lost. It was 1970. He’d been singing since he was 12 years old but producing the same old sound of a traditional Southern soul singer. He was tired of the politics behind the music industry and the constraints and pressures that it put him under.
So he decided to reinvent himself. Thus, Swamp Dogg emerged — an irreverent, satirical alter ego.
It’s an identity that Williams has changed. Then changed again. And again.
Williams’ latest reinvention, a new Swamp Dogg album called “Love, Loss and Auto-Tune,” comes out Sept. 7.
“I am doing the same thing that I had been doing at the start of my career,” Williams, 76, told the Journal Sentinel earlier this summer, a day after playing a Wisconsin set at Justin Vernon’s Eaux Claires Music and Arts Festival in Eau Claire.
“This is just another experiment — most all my albums are experiments,” Williams said.
The record features a newly Autotuned Swamp Dogg, reflecting a more modernized take on the “original Dogg” sound.
“Love, Loss and Auto-Tune” also features more collaboration than much of Williams’ previous music. Vernon, the leader of Bon Iver, finetuned the vocals, and the album was produced by Ryan Olson of Minneapolis synth-pop band Poliça.
Vernon also contributed vocals to Williams’ first single from the album, “I’ll Pretend.” Rolling Stone magazine described the track as one that “merges Swamp Dogg and Vernon’s voices into one eerie vocoder mass, as they croon heartbroken lyrics over a shifting landscape of billowing synth and distant, bluesy electric guitar riffs.”
Williams has written the bulk of his music for the last 12 or so years with Larry “MoogStar” Clemon, a soul musician known for his use of synthesizers and for infusing funk in his music.
“We have always been true collaborators,” Williams said of their partnership.
“It’s like he made the telephone and I made the bell on it — so his telephone wouldn’t be (expletive) unless you could hear it ring,” Williams added, he and Clemon laughing.
But working with Olson added a new dimension to his music — even though all of the collaboration was remote.
In fact, all of the collaborations — between Williams, Olson and Vernon — were done remotely. Williams sent the music and vocal tracks to Olson, who worked his magic producing. Some of Williams’ first attempts at using Auto-tune were “a bit rough around the edges,” so Olson called up Vernon to rework the digital effects on his vocals.
Of working with Vernon, a native of Eau Claire which also plays home to his music festival, Williams said they have something in common.
“I think he’s gotten this successful by being ‘weird,’” Williams said. “I’m weird, too. I don’t walk around carrying guilt about it.”
At this year’s Eaux Claires festival, Vernon received intense criticism for the decision to keep the festival lineup a secret. (Vernon did not make himself available for an interview for this story.)
Williams has faced criticism since he decided to change his name to Swamp Dogg, and he began a career of bizarrely titled albums that featured lyrics that were widely considered inappropriate.
“The more offended they became, the more determined I became to continue,” Williams said with a shrug.