Swamp Dogg Live at Grimey’s
Please join us on Friday, July 19th at 5:00 PM when we welcome Swamp Dogg to the record store to celebrate the release of Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th Street, his new album out now on Oh Boy Records. Swamp Dogg will be in town to perform at The Opry on Saturday, July 20th and we’re pumped he’s able to spend a bit of his time in town with us. You can purchase a copy of Blackgrass in the shop or on our site here for a wristband for his post-performance album signing and that guarantees entrance to our event. (Wristbands are required for the signing except for kids 12 & under attending with a wristbanded adult.) Our event itself is free and all ages, so come one, come all!
“Not a lot of people talk about the true origins of bluegrass music, but it came from Black people. The banjo, the washtub, all that stuff started with African Americans. We were playing it before it even had a name.” - Swamp Dogg
Produced by Ryan Olson (Bon Iver, Poliça) and recorded with an all-star band including Noam Pikelny, Sierra Hull, Jerry Douglas, Chris Scruggs, Billy Contreras, and Kenny Vaughan, Blackgrass is a riotous blend of past and present, mixing the sacred and the profane in typical Swamp Dogg fashion as it blurs the lines between folk, roots, country, blues, and soul. The tracklist is an eclectic one—brand new originals and vintage Swamp Dogg classics sit side by side with reimaginings of ’70s R&B hits and timeless ’50s pop tunes—but the performances here are thoroughly cohesive, filtering everything through a progressive Appalachian lens that nods to tradition without ever being bound by it. Special guests like Margo Price, Vernon Reid, Jenny Lewis, Justin Vernon, and The Cactus Blossoms all add to the excitement, but it’s ultimately the 81-year-old Swamp Dogg’s delivery—sly and playful and full of genuine joy and ache—that steals the show. The result is a record that’s as reverent as it is raunchy, a collection that challenges conventional notions of genre and race while at the same time celebrating the music that helped make Swamp Dogg the beloved iconoclast he’s known as today.
This is gonna be a super fun time, y ‘all. We can’t wait to see Swamp Dogg in the shop and celebrate Blackgrass with him and our friends at Oh Boy Records. We hope you’ll be here to enjoy this special performance with us!
Swamp Doog’s Blackgrass vinyl LP (Oh Boy Records)