Jenny Lewis making her long overdue Grand Ole Opry debut tonight!

You can listen to Jenny Lewis make her Opry debut live on WSM Radio online tonight – show time is 7pm. Check the link below. 

Here's the scoop from the Opry...

Joy’All, the fifth solo album from alternative indie rock queen pin Jenny Lewis, sees the highly anticipated return of one of the most respected singer-songwriters of the 21st century.

A culmination of Lewis’ prolific 25-year career, which continues to blaze a path for generations of alternative and indie rock artists, Joy’All follows her four previous 4 solo albums - 2019’s On The Line, 2014’s The Voyager, 2008’s Acid Tongue and her 2006 solo debut Rabbit Fur Coat - as well as her tenure as co-founder of ‘00s alt-indie rock icons Rilo Kiley, side projects including The Postal Service, and collaborations with Beck, Elvis Costello, Conor Oberst, Bon Iver, and Ringo Starr…just to name a few.

Joy’All also sees the continuation of a fruitful creative relationship with Beck. In 2021, Lewis participated in a week-long virtual songwriting workshop, that challenged her to write one song every day for seven days, with guidelines from the eight-time Grammy®-winner - a challenge that resulted in Lewis writing a good portion of Joy’All.

Heralded by the “strummy, beach bunny americana anthem” (Vulture) first offering “Puppy and a Truck” as well as the chart-topping “Psychos” (watch performances below) - declared as “one of the best album openers of the year… an instant classic” (Rolling Stone) - “Giddy Up,” and “Cherry Baby,” Joy’All has quickly garnered a rapturous reception of critical acclaim: “four years on from her career-best on the line, she’s sounding better than ever” (Paper); “a kaleidoscopic pivot of the grandest proportions - Joy’All is Lewis’ brightest, grooviest, and coolest album yet” (Paste); “she can deploy her sweet, crisp, powerful voice in a million ways, equally able to embody heartbreak, weariness, sensuality, desperation, optimism or humor” (NPR).

With no signs of slowing down for 2023, Jenny is hitting the road for The Postal Service's 20th Anniversary tour for their platinum album give up as well as supporting dates for the Beck and Phoenix Summer Odyssey Tour, in addition to her own headlining dates in support of Joy’All this winter.

For more info, check the Grand Ole Opry site right here. Listen to Thursday's show featuring Jenny Lewis live on WSM Radio right here starting at 7 pm Central or 8 pm Eastern.  Watch Jenny perform "Psychos" on Jimmy Kimmel Live and "Puppy and a Truck" shot for Office Hours Live. 

 

Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted documentary screens @ Hot Docs Cinema, Friday

The much-anticipated Jerry Williams doc Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted screens at Hot Docs Cinema on Friday at 5:15 pm. 

Here's the scoop...

If you were to swap the quartet of white women who share a house in Miami in The Golden Girls for a trio of Black men jamming, tripping and co-habiting in the San Fernando Valley, you’d get Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted! Legendary cult singer/songwriter and producer Jerry Williams aka "Swamp Dogg" has transformed his home into an artistic playground and “bachelor pad for aging musicians," where he and his roommates Moogstar and Guitar Shorty enjoy their retirement while continuing to experiment with music and sound. 

With over 50 years in the recording industry, Swamp Dogg has written, arranged, performed and produced more than 2,000 songs, worked on nearly 500 albums with hundreds of artists, and released 26 albums of his own. Despite this prolific output, he continues to create, because fun—not fame—is the name of the game. This wonderfully bizarre and inspiring reminiscence weaves Swamp Dogg and his friends’ current output, their friendships and funny non sequiturs together with past accomplishments and accolades in a music doc unlike any other.

Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted screens at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema on Friday (May 3) at 5:15 pm. For more info, check the Hot Docs site right here. 
 

 

Jenny Lewis shares "Psychos" from new album JOY'ALL out June 9th

The new Jenny Lewis album JOY'ALL is out June 9th – pre-order it here. Listen to "Psychos," "Apples and Oranges" and "Joy'all" 

Watch Swamp Dogg's short film about Sorry You Couldn't Make it

Director Isaac Gale gives us a fly-on-the-wall view of Swamp Dogg making his new country album Sorry You Couldn't Make It in Nashville. 

Here's the scoop...
Jerry Williams’—aka Swamp Dogg—first love was country music, listening to it as a Navy family kid growing up in Portsmouth, Virginia. “My granddaddy, he just bought country records out the asshole,” Swamp remembers. “Every Friday when he came home from the Navy yard he’d stop off and get his records, like ‘Mule Train’ by Frankie Laine, or ‘Riders in the Sky’ by Vaughn Monroe.” His first time performing on stage, in fact, was a country song at a talent show when he was six years old: “I did Red Foley’s version of ‘Peace in the Valley.’”

While the 77 year-old Williams’ most enduring persona is the psychedelic soul superhero Swamp Dogg—a musical vigilante upholding truths both personal and political since 1970’s immortal album, Total Destruction To Your Mind—he will tell anybody who will listen that he’s considered himself country this entire time. “If you notice I use a lot of horns,” Swamp says. “But actually, if you listen to my records before I start stacking shit on it, I’m country. I sound country.”

Swamp began his professional singing career as Little Jerry Williams back in the ‘50s before working as an A&R man for Atlantic Records in the late ‘60s. His biggest hit is actually a country song: 1970’s “Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got).” Written with his best friend Gary U.S. Bonds, the track is country in that woeful, underdog-baring-their-soul sort of way that for some reason only country songs really ever allow themselves to be. Freddie North covered it first and made it a Top 40 pop song, but Johnny Paycheck took it all the way to #2 on the country charts in 1971.

Following 2018’s critically acclaimed, Ryan Olson-produced Love, Loss, And Auto-Tune—his first LP to debut on 11 Billboard charts (including at #7 on 'Heatseekers’) and his first chart ink since his 1970 song “Mama's Baby - Daddy's Maybe”—Sorry You Couldn’t Make It allows Swamp to finally dive into the sound he grew up playing. With the support of Pioneer Works Press, they recorded the album at Nashville’s Sound Emporium with Olson as producer once again, and backed by a crack studio band led by Derick Lee, a keyboard virtuoso who worked as the musical director of BET’s Bobby Jones Gospel Show for nearly four decades. Nashville guitar firebrand Jim Oblon combusts his way through lead duties, while frequent collaborator Moogstar and special guests Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), John Prine, Jenny Lewis, Channy Leaneagh and Chris Beirden of Poliça, and Sam Amidon join the action throughout.

A band of 14 players, including Vernon, Lee, Beirden, and Moogstar, among others, provides the background for Swamp’s devastating new take on “Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got).” Lead single “Sleeping Without You Is A Dragg” is one of Swamp’s most heartfelt songs to date and features Vernon on piano as well as backing vocals by Lewis and Leaneagh. He duets with country-folk legend Prine on two songs (“It’s the first time I seen John since the sixties!” laughs Swamp): the indelible, psychedelic ballad “Memories” and the reflective “Please Let Me Go Round Again.” Originally written and demoed in his forties, “Please Let Me Go Round Again” is a plea for one more chance at life, sung with acute emotional connection. Listen to Swamp Dogg's "Memories" with John Prine below.



These are narratives about love, of missing the one you love, of compassion, family and friends, and even the kind of love that transcends death. “I was looking for a new way for Swamp Dogg to go,” he explains. “Apart from me singing and writing most of the songs, I didn’t participate—in other words, I told ‘em, ‘Don’t ask me, I wanna see what happens without my influence.’ It was hard for me to do, ego-wise.”

Sorry You Couldn’t Make It sees Swamp come full circle, and closes what has felt to him like unfinished business. “They didn’t have any blacks in country until Charlie Pride came along,” he says. “But in time, all things change and that's what has happened to country music.” Surveying today’s Nashville reality, Swamp sees opportunity: artists as divergent as Darius Rucker and Lil Nas X are converging in a genre that he once worried might never give him his shot. “I'm anxious because it's like I've taken all my money and put it on one horse,” he says. “But I believe in this horse.”

Watch Isaac Gale's 13-minute documentary narrated by Lambchop's Kurt Wagner below. Get a limited-edition splatter wax copy of Swamp Dogg's Sorry You Couldn't Make It album with a bonus 3-song 7" while supplies last right here.

Watch Jenny Lewis play a Tiny Desk Concert and a new tune

Jenny Lewis, Anna Butterss & Emily Elbert perform "Rabbit Hole," "Do Si Do" and "Just One Of The Guys" followed by "Under The Supermoon" 

Hear Swamp Dogg's new country single feat. Jenny Lewis & Justin Vernon

Listen to "Sleeping Without You Is A Dragg" off Swamp Dogg's new country album, Sorry You Couldn't Make It out March 6th. 

Legendary soul singer/songwriter and producer Swamp Dogg has just announced that his new album Sorry You Couldn’t Make It, produced by Ryan Olson (Poliça), will be released on March 6th, via Joyful Noise Recordings and Pioneer Works Press. First single “Sleeping Without You Is A Dragg”—featuring piano by Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and backing vocals by Jenny Lewis and Channy Leaneagh (Poliça)—is out now. Watch the  lyric video directed by Jacob Graham below. 

The follow-up to 2018’s critically acclaimed, Olson-produced Love, Loss, And Auto-Tune—Swamp Dogg’s first album to debut on 11 Billboard charts (including at #7 on 'Heatseekers’) and his first chart ink since his 1970 song “Mama's Baby - Daddy's Maybe”—Sorry You Couldn’t Make It allows Jerry Williams, aka Swamp Dogg, to finally dive into the sound he grew up playing: country. With the support of Pioneer Works Press, they recorded the album at Nashville’s Sound Emporium backed by a crack studio band led by Derick Lee, a keyboard virtuoso who worked as the musical director of BET’s Bobby Jones Gospel Show for nearly four decades. Nashville guitar firebrand Jim Oblon combusts his way through lead duties, while frequent collaborator Moogstar and other special guests John Prine, Chris Beirden of Poliça, and Sam Amidon join the action throughout.

While the 77 year-old Williams’ most enduring persona is the psychedelic soul superhero Swamp Dogg—a musical vigilante upholding truths both personal and political since 1970’s immortal album, Total Destruction To Your Mind—he will tell anybody who will listen that he’s considered himself country this entire time. “If you notice I use a lot of horns,” Swamp says. “But actually, if you listen to my records before I start stacking shit on it, I’m country. I sound country.”  

A band of 14 players, including Vernon, Lee, Beirden, and Moogstar, among others, provides the background for Swamp’s devastating new take on his biggest hit, 1970’s “Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got).” Written with his best friend Gary U.S. Bonds, the track is country in that woeful, underdog-baring-their-soul sort of way that for some reason only country songs really ever allow themselves to be. Freddie North covered it first and made it a Top 40 pop song, but Johnny Paycheck took it all the way to #2 on the country charts in 1971. He duets with country-folk legend Prine on two songs (“It’s the first time I seen John since the sixties!” laughs Swamp): the indelible, psychedelic ballad “Memories” and the reflective “Please Let Me Go Round Again.” Originally written and demoed in his forties, “Please Let Me Go Round Again” is a plea for one more chance at life, sung with acute emotional connection.  

These are narratives about love, of missing the one you love, of compassion, family and friends, and even the kind of love that transcends death. Sorry You Couldn’t Make It sees Swamp come full circle, and closes what has felt to him like unfinished business. “They didn’t have any blacks in country until Charlie Pride came along,” he says. “But in time, all things change and that's what has happened to country music.” Surveying today’s Nashville reality, Swamp sees opportunity: artists as divergent as Darius Rucker and Lil Nas X are converging in a genre that he once worried might never give him his shot. “I'm anxious because it's like I've taken all my money and put it on one horse,” he says. “But I believe in this horse.”

Swamp Dogg – Sorry You Couldn’t Make It 

1.Sleeping Without You Is A Dragg

2.Good, Better, Best

3.Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got)

4.Family Pain

5.I Lay Awake

6.Memories (feat. John Prine)

7.I’d Rather Be Your Used To be

8.Billy

9.A Good Song

10.Please Let Me Go Round Again (feat. John Prine)

Jenny Lewis @ Danforth Music Hall, Thursday

Why not spend Halloween with Jenny Lewis. Check out her new video for "Rabbit Hole" and her appearance in the Archie comic Jughead's Time Police #5.  

Jenny Lewis opening for Death Cab For Cutie @ Echo Beach, Thursday

Here's Jenny Lewis performing "Red Bull & Hennessy" and "Wasted Youth" on Jimmy Kimmel Live recently. 

Watch Jenny Lewis perform "Red Bull & Hennessy"

"Red Bull & Hennessy" is off Jenny's new album On The Line – she opens for Death Cab at Echo Beach on June 20. 

Tickets for the Toronto return of Jenny Lewis w/ Death Cab For Cutie at Echo Beach are on sale now right here.  

Jenny Lewis, The National, Father John Misty @ Fort York, Saturday

Here's a clip of Jenny playing two new songs at the Bijou in Knoxville. She's on stage at Fort York around 5:30 pm.

Tristen unveils Sneaker Waves @ Drake Hotel, July 19

Watch Tristen's video for Glass Jar with Jenny Lewis and Partyin' Is Such Sweet Sorrow.  Sneaker Waves is out July 7th. 

Tristen on Tour

7/6 Charleston, SC The Royal American
7/7 Athens, GA Georgia Theatre (Rooftop)
7/8 Chattanooga, TN JJ's Bohemia
7/14 Cincinnati, OH MOTR
7/15 Columbus, OH Rumba Cafe
7/16 Cleveland, OH The Beachland Ballroom and Tavern
7/19 Toronto, ON The Drake Hotel
7/20 Montreal, QB Le Divan Orange
7/21 Boston, MA The Rockwell
7/22 New York, NY Berlin NYC
7/26 Philadelphia, PA Boot & Saddle
7/27 Washington DC DC9 Nightclub
7/28 Pittsburgh, PA Club Cafe
9/8 Dallas, TX Sundown at Granada^
9/9 Austin, TX Stubb's Austin^
9/10 Houston, TX White Oak Music Hall^
9/12 El Prado, NM Taos Mesa Brewing Mothership^
9/13 Phoenix, AZ The Rebel Lounge^
9/15 Del Mar, CA KAABOO
9/16 Los Angeles, CA Resident^
9/19 San Francisco, CA Bottom of the Hill^

^w/ Jenny O.