ALBUM REVIEW: Swamp Dogg Scratches a New Sonic Itch on ‘Blackgrass’

In the weeks since the release of Cowboy Carter, there have been dozens, possibly hundreds of thinkpieces written about the impact Beyoncé’s album is having on country radio and country music in general. All that attention and acclamation is well deserved, and the conversation it’s spawning is much needed. The project will — and already has — boosted the careers of other Black artists that have been overlooked for far too long in the country community.

Then there’s Swamp Dogg.

Swamp Dogg (photo by David McMurry)

Whether there will be a similar amount of intellectualizing and chin scratching surrounding the release of Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St. is yet to be seen. But the idea of some scholar pontificating the merits of, or hidden meanings behind, say, “Mess Under That Dress” prompts the type of laughter usually reserved for the ribald humor that Swamp Dogg (born Jerry Williams Jr.) is sometimes known for over his long and genuinely unique career.

Blackgrass is produced by Ryan Olson, who helmed Dogg’s 2018 album Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune, and 2020’s Sorry You Couldn’t Make It (ND review). Over the last few years, Olson has become a major part of the Swamp Dogg universe, co-directing the unconventional rock-doc Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted with Isaac Gale, which premiered this year at SXSW. He’s proved that he’s more than willing to indulge Dogg’s proclivities, assembling some of the best pickers in bluegrass and acoustic music for the sessions: Billy Contreras, Jerry Douglas, Sierra Hull, Noam Pikelny, Chris Scruggs, and Kenny Vaughan. They’ve set the table with all the fixin’s while Dogg arrives with the pig cooker.

Pikelny’s banjo kicks off the album in jubilant Earl Scruggs-like fashion as Dogg enters with lyrics that celebrate, albeit crassly, a woman’s anatomy. We’ve suddenly shifted from the Blue Ridge Mountains to a juke joint on a Saturday night. But that’s what you get with a Swamp Dogg outing. Thankfully, there’s also no affectation in Dogg’s delivery; no attempt to “sound hillbilly.” He sings the way he always has. Southern-fried soul and rhythm and blues form the gut, no matter who or what is backing him, be it a bluegrass band or new-fangled gadgets filtered through Auto-Tune.

Throughout Blackgrass, as is the case with most of Dogg’s albums, the risqué mixes with the poignant. It’s a refreshing reminder that we all contain multitudes, that comedy and tragedy do often share the same bed. One moment he’s encouraging listeners to become an “Ugly Man’s Wife” to have a happy life, and the next he has “Songs to Sing” about a “nation the world no longer trusts,” about the “riots you see on TV / and how after 500 years, people are still not free.”

There’s also traditional country, something Dogg has loved and employed over his whole career, dating at least back to the hit he penned for Johnny Paycheck, later covered by Tracy Byrd, “Don’t Take Her, She’s All I Got,” which Dogg himself revisited on Sorry You Couldn’t Make It. On Blackgrass, he offers up “Curtains on the Window,” which follows the talking-to-inanimate-objects premise famously employed by Willie Nelson on “Hello Walls.” Each piece of furniture mourns in its own way the narrator’s lover leaving. Even the “curtains on the window waved goodbye.”

Thankfully, Dogg hasn’t abandoned his weird-ass psychedelic side for this project. He inserts odd effects in random places, almost to see if you’re paying attention. It’s the over-the-top echo in parts of “Have a Good Time” (a song made famous by Tony Bennett in 1952) and the space-age lasers at the end of “Your Best Friend” (a 1969 release by The Drifters) that keep you on your toes. Then there’s the out-of-nowhere shred-fest provided by none other than Living Colour ax-man Vernon Reid that infiltrates the otherwise traditional speedgrass treatment of “Rise Up” (originally recorded by The Commodores in 1971). Both “Your Best Friend” and “Rise Up” are Dogg originals revived in Blackgrass style for this set.

Another original, “To the Other Woman” (co-written with Gary “U.S.” Bonds), features a moving performance from Margo Price, who wrings country out of the pleading soul of the lyrics. In addition to Price and Reid, Dogg also enlists Jenny Lewis to duet on a vivacious version of Inez and Charles Foxx’s “Count the Days.”

After the bawdy humor, the hopes and dreams for better times, brief bouts of nostalgia, and the cheatin’, cryin’, and lyin’, Blackgrass closes with the sound of an electric chair frying its unrepentant narrator. In his final moments, despite his lack of remorse for the horrible choices he’s made, the murderer turns philosophical. “My father used to teach me, ‘Boy, us and Blacks ain’t alike’ / Now I’m sittin’ here in this chair, all wired up / wearing stripes, black and white.”

OK, fine. I suppose that’s worth a chin scratch or two.

Swamp Dogg’s Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St. is out May 31 on Oh Boy Records.