Ridiculous, Ubiquitious Serendipity: Out of the Basement with Swampadelica
by Bob Makin

The New Orleans-inspired band Swampadelica has been experiencing some mighty powerful rock 'n' roll voodoo it calls "ridiculous, ubiquitous serendipity."

A string of good luck for the Boonton, N.J.-based group includes participating in the reopening of the legendary Asbury Park nightclub The Stone Pony on Memorial Day weekend. Swampadelica was chosen based on the strength of its independent self-titled debut CD.

The gumbo of American roots music, New Orleans funk and R&B, psychedelic rock and jazz fusion also led to the band's first headline spot at Wetlands Preserve, a room the band's founders, vocalist-percussionist Stevo Nelson and vocalist-keyboardist Damian Calcagne, have been playing since it opened in 1989. They were in a Grateful Dead-like group called Old Joe Bones at the time. Calcagne also has played sold-out shows at Wetlands as the touring keyboardist in the late great Jersey jam band From Good Homes.

Before teaming up with his songwriting partner, Nelson absorbed many of the Crescent City's diverse rhythms as the door man at New Orleans' legendary Tipitina's. Mutual fans of the Dead and such New Orleans staples as The Meters, Dr. John and Allen Toussaint, the pair picked some fresh but familiar fruit off the song tree for about a year before recruiting the veteran Northwest Jersey rhythm section of Bill Miller, a jazz-schooled drummer, and classically trained bassist Paul Kuzik. The bandmates still weren't fully committed to the rootsy, funky unit until their musical gumbo was made even tastier by dynamic, entertaining backing vocalists Nicole Grana and Kerri Lavin, known affectionately as the Whoa Bips, and the smoking white-haired Louisiana-bred saxophonist "Snowman" Brian Powers.

At that point, Powers asked Calcagne if he thought MTV ever would be interested in the jam 'n' groove nine-piece, whose lineup is rounded out by new guitarist Brian Herkert and founding-turned-frequent guest harmonica player Tim Cassidy. The very next day after Calcagne expressed his doubt about MTV, the music coordinator of "The Real World" called. He had heard cyber samples of the band's music on Billboard Magazine's Talent Net and wanted to license the entire album.

"Hoo Doo," a down 'n' dirty tale about a lost soul who finds trouble on New Orleans' most dangerous streets, was featured on June 13 on "The Real World," which is set in the Crescent City this season. "Trust & Honor" will be used in Episode #8 on July 25. Such swampy fare as the anthemic soul-stirrer "Mighty High" also may appear on the show.

But the best example of Swampadelica's "ridiculous, ubiquitous serendipity" is stumbling upon a working and personal relationship with John Siket of Phish's famed "Siket Tapes." The New Jersey/New York-based engineer, who also has worked with Dave Matthews Band, Guster, moe. and Sonic Youth, hired Nelson to build a vocal booth in his Mutiny Zoo Studios in Hoboken. When he heard Swampadelica's tape, he loved it so much that during his downtime last fall, he worked with the band for weeks until the wee hours of the morning.

"Theirs is a sound that honors the roots of R&B, funk and Cajun while being very alive and original," Siket says. "Some of the songwriting is incredible and I really like the sound of Stevo's voice. We had a good time hanging out drinking and recording at the Zoo."

With more than three album's worth of material to its credit, Swampadelica plans to work with Siket again with the backing of an independent or major label. Other plans include a show with Zen Tricksters and Stir Fried at Wetlands on July 29, a gig every month through the end of the year at The Stanhope House in Stanhope, N.J., and an August tour of New England.

For more info about the band, visit www.swampadelica.com. In the meantime, enjoy the following interview with Calcagne.

How do you feel about headlining Wetlands for the first time?

I feel great about it. We're almost customed designed for that room. To see it coming to fruition reinforces our vision. It validates it to know that what we're thinking, they seem to be thinking the same thing. It's a great room. Tons of great people have played there. It's a legendary room in a way. It's got great sound, great lights, great vibe, great crowd.

What bands were you and Stevo in before Swampadelica and how did that influence what you're doing now?

Pretty much taught us what not to do (laughs). We've run the gamut. Originally I had a band called Old Joe Bones. There was a Dead influence there, but that was when I was a kid. Then I played pretty hard-core blues for a while.

What did Stevo do?

He was the doorman at Tipitina's for six years. That planted the rhythmic and melodic seeds for the way he hears the music. During those days, he met and took care of Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Ray Vaughan and became friends with all the Neville Brothers and Gerald Tilman who's dead now was a big part of that whole Meters scene. He was a big influence and a had a big impact spiritually on Stevo.

So you're coming from a psychedelic Dead influence and he's coming from a New Orleans influence. Do you share those influences?

We both were drawing from those other camps before we met. I had some friends in New Orleans growing up and I would go down there. And that was before I even knew Stevo.

Was he familiar with Old Joe Bones?

Yeah, he would come and sit in with us. That's how I came to know him. He would show up at our gigs and play the rub boards. He actually filled in on drums. We did a gig at Wetlands in 1989 when Stevo was the drummer for that gigs in Old Joe Bones.

When was he down in New Orleans?

Most of the '80s.

But he's originally from Jersey?

Yeah, Livingston. And I'm originally from Denville. I live in Boonton now and the band's office is there, but we rehearse in this barn in Vernon.

Tell me about the multi-media shows you have at Rickey & Son Barn in Vernon?

We know that business pretty well. One of our techies is a professional projectionist. I've spent a number of years in graphic arts and computer graphics, so we've put together a huge screen show with some video and a whole bunch of still imagery and a light show.

This guy Jamie Rickey inherited this barn and a couple hundred acres of land. He's really into music and being part of the scene and helping us out. We'll do one of these big shows every once in a while to pay our rent there. The barn was built in the '30s. It's three stories high and 175 feet long, 70 feet wide. It's just huge. The vibe is just great. The sound is immaculate.

The last album From Good Homes did for RCA was recorded in this barn. They have a song called 'Second Red Barn on the Right' and that was about this barn.

Is it a commercial farm?

I guess he's doing whatever he has to remain those rights. He has an organic co-op going.

How did you hook up with Jamie?

I was in From Good Homes the last year they were together. They asked me to join so I was touring with them. They didn't have a keyboard player. Near the end, they wanted their sound to be a little bigger so they brought me in with a Hammond and a couple of Leslies. That was great. We did some great shows. I did the farewell show at Waterloo (Village) which was kind of a dream come true for me.

From Good Homes holds the record for selling out Irving Plaza the most number of times. Did you play there with them?

No, there were no Irving gigs in the last eight months. We did the Wetlands and Higher Ground in Burlington, Vt.

Tell me how you and Stevo put Swampadelica together and how the band hit the musical marks you wanted.

We knew what we'd like to hear. We said, 'Let's just go for this. Let's be true to the sound, open up the doorways to the muse, not worry about trends, commercial viability or anything but the two of us sitting down in my basement with all this recording gear.' We started getting together on a nightly basis in my basement up all night till 4 or 5 in the morning writing these songs. We just had so much in common as writers. We felt that each of us had so much that the other didn't that between the two of us, we could come up with a complete sound.

We went through one incarnation. After five months in my basement, we never made it out of the basement because we pretty much sucked. Then we demoed some songs and started looking for players from the area. Paul Kuzik, the bass player, heard it, wanted to come on board and brought Bill Miller, the drummer. The two of them were a package deal. They've been playing together for 12 years as a rhythm section. They were our saviors because they took our music and brought it out of the basement. They're serious musicians. Paul studied 20th Century Classical Percussion with William DeRoche in William Paterson College.

He and Bill gave Stevo and I shit for about a year, saying, 'Your time, your pitch. Pay attention!' Paul also has perfect pitch so these guys would hear all the discrepancies in what Stevo and I were doing. Bill went to the University of Miami.

That's were the Dixie Dregs went. Steve Morse and all those guys.

Oh really. Bill's like that. He brought the Billy Cobham fusion camp into it.

Yeah, that's big down there. That's where Vince, the percussionist from Stir Fried went too.

They have a great program one of the best in the country. So you have Bill bringing in this fusion element. You have Paul bringing in this out classical, out there harmonic sense on the bass. So this took this American-rooted thing that Stevo and I were doing and added an angular depth to it. So we played like that for a while with a guitar player and a harmonica player. Tim Cassidy was the harmonica player.

Tim guests with us, but he's not a permanent member. Jack O'Donnell was the guitar player, but when we decided to take it to another level, Jack, time-wise, was not able to do it. Brian Herkert is our guitarist now.

Then you've got Kerri Lavin and Nicole Grana, who are just wonderful as your back-up singers. So much fun and entertaining. And then you have saxophonist 'Snowman' Brian Powers, the only actual Louisiana native in the band.

They actually came in as part of the recording process. The original lineup was together maybe a year and there was some problems so we decided it was time to breakup, but we had this time scheduled with Siket. We had two days scheduled. So Stevo and I were left holding these master tapes of eight songs. We were debating to leave the band for dead and just write it off. That was in June of last year. Then in the fall, I met Kerri and Nicole. They heard the rough tracks and said, 'You can't let this die. This is happening. We'll come on board fulltime and we'll tour.' I mean, these two beautiful girls with beautiful voices and boatloads of positive energy. So we went back into the studio with Siket and for the next six months. We worked with the girls and Snowman came into the project. So the process of making the album reformed the band. When the girls came in, it gave it sonic images of the Garcia Band in the late '80s with the two girl singers.

You and Stevo are good singers. You've got a Dr. John-meets-Dylan kind of voice. And Stevo has a soulful. But the girls make you both sound like better singers.

We knew they would take off the rough edges of what we were doing.

It's such a nice, bittersweet blend. Comment on the blend of your sound and what inspired it.

It really wasn't a conscious effort. It's just through years of listening. There's tons of influences in the songwriting. You can hear a lot of Motown, soul stuff, Ray Charles, early '70s Robert Palmer. As far as my influences as a player, Dr. John, Thelonious Monk, John Medeski, the list goes on and on.

Allen Toussaint.

You nailed it right there as far as songwriting. He's a huge influence. Leon Russell, Tom Waits, Randy Newman in the songwriting. Of course, we all love The Beatles and Mozart.

And James Brown. The funk thing. Bill Miller has really been listening to a lot of funk lately as have a lot of the people. Funk has never really died.

The whole band is coming from different places. Brian Herkert, the guitar player, he's heavily influence by Daniel Lanois.

Another New Orleans guy.

But not your traditional New Orleans. He and Brian Eno did U2. He's done a couple of great Dylan records. But Brian has been influenced by Robert Fripp, Primus, Buckethead, so he brings this completely different element to the band.

How did you hook up with Siket and what did he bring to your album?

Hooking up with Siket is a perfect example of the serendipity of Stevo. Stevo just has a way of stepping in shit. He called me one day. He goes, 'Hey, did you ever hear of a guy named John Siket?' And I'm like, 'Yeah, I think he did some Phish records.' He was like, 'Yeah, I'm in his office right now. I built a vocal booth for him in his studio. I played him some of our demos. He likes it. He wants to work with us.'

So John agreed to do a few sessions. I don't know if he knew what to make of us at first. As it continued, I think John was amazed each step of the way. We worked on it for a year two or three days at a time. Through that, we became really good friends with him.

For him to work with you guys is pretty wild given that he doesn't have a lot of time on his hands. Some of those days he worked with you must have been his days off.

Yeah, it was downtime for him. We would do 20-hour days. All right, my day rate's done. We would work till 8 in the morning. He would go as long as we wanted to.

I understand you were at Phish's barn studio with him checking out cuts off 'Farmhouse.'

Yeah, we went up there after all the basic tracks were done. I drove my van up and we picked up speakers that he needed to move into Theater 99. It's an old vaudeville theater on the Lower East Side. It's a big live room that John's getting together. I just offered to help him. Phish was on tour at that time. But he played me the rough cuts. It was cool.

Do you plan on working with John again?

Yeah, we'd like to get some record company money, either a major or independent label, and actually have a budget this time so we can go in and dedicate a month to making the record. We have about three more records worth of songs. We have lots of material.

How did you hook up with MTV?

I signed up for this service called the Billboard Talent Net. You just put a sample file in cyberspace and hopefully somebody hears it. I never thought anything of it.

One night after rehearsal, Snowman and I were in my kitchen at 3 o'clock in the morning. He goes, 'Dai, do you think we'll ever have any success with MTV?' And I'm like, 'MTV?! Naw, kid. We're not really they're bag. We're more of a grass-roots kind of thing. We're going to have to work it from the ground up.' And he goes, 'I guess you're right.'

The very next day out of nowhere, the music coordinator from 'The Real World' called me at my house saying, 'We heard a sample of your song on the Internet. Send us the album.' I sent it to him and he was like, 'We love the whole thing. Can we license all eight songs?' I was like, 'Certainly.'

It was really funny because we never talked about MTV. The one time we talked about it and we're like, 'It'll never happen,' they call within 10 hours of the conversation.

They played 'Hoo Doo' on June 13 for the first show of the new season. How did it work into the show?

It's the classic 'Real World' scene where all the new roommates are going through the house choosing their rooms. They have it fast motion and it comes in with the piano riff at the top of the tune. I don't know how long it goes for, but it segues into 'Mixed Business' from Beck's new record.

There's 22 episodes in total and they've only edited the first four. We'll keep our fingers crossed. It's just more of the ubiquitous serendipity of Swampadelica. Or the ridiculous ubiquitous serendipity of Swampadelica.

We work hard obviously and try to get things in as many places as we can, but it just seems like these things are happening with very little of our doing. Paul, the bass player, is just continually amazed by it. At rehearsal, the whole thing is such a circus spinning out of control all the time and yet, we keep having this ridiculous, ubiquitous serendipity.

Comment on what 'Hoo Doo' is about and what inspired it?

That song came with this Hammond that I bought. It was a Hammond M3, which is a little bit smaller than a B3, that I bought from this guy who used to tour with Bo Diddley. I got it home, I turned it on and I started playing it and the first thing that came out was 'Hoo Doo.' It just happened. It was like it came with the keyboard. It's funny with old instruments, these patterns dictate what you play. I really believe as a songwriter, if you're open to the muse and wait around and channel it when it arises, that's where these songs come from. 'Hoo Doo' was certainly one of them. It came in a quick flash.

It's about a character whose life has fallen apart. He takes this road trip down to New Orleans. You know David Lynch's 'Wild at Heart'? That's one of my favorite movies. When the guy's driving down to New Orleans frantic out of his mind all through the night and 'Baby Please Don't Go.' It's that kind of thing. So this guy heads out on a road trip to New Orleans slightly out of his mind and winds up on the highly dangerous backstreets of New Orleans. He gets mixed up with all these lo-fi characters.

What other songs do you like to play live?

We have a song called 'Let It Go' that was written after making the record. We were just doing a lot of open-ended playing. 'Let It Go' was born out of that. Pretty much every member of the band gets writing credit. It's a real collaboration from everybody. And it was real spontaneous the way it happened. It's more of a funk tune, kind of Santana-ish. It's got a real big sound and there's a middle section that changes every time. A lot of vocal spontaneity comes into it with improvised lyrics.

You mix it up enough to play with a while different bunch of bands and venues. How's that working out for you?

Yeah, we have this sound that we could do blues festivals with, roots festivals with. It pretty much fits in a lot of places. We can share bills with all kinds of people and it never really seems inappropriate. It's definitely American music.

Who would you most like to play with because it would work?

It's hard to say. We did a couple of co-bills with Todd Scheaffer from From Good Homes. He would do a solo acoustic thing. And we did one with Patrick Fitzsimmons, the drummer from From Good Homes. He's embarking on his solo acoustic singer-songwriter career. We did a show with him that seemed like a real nice blend. Here's this guy playing these really delicate songs. It just set the stage because we come on with this driving, rollicking carnival of people. So to have a guy like Patrick set the stage, it seems like a real nice contrast that works well for the listener. Then we'll come up and back Patrick or Todd as a band on a couple of tunes. So we'd have this overlapping segue from his set into our set.

Have you ever done it with the both of him?

No. But I keep in steady contact with those guys. We're all pretty good friends. Brady, the bass player from From Good Homes, also has a solo thing and I've been working with him on that. So we have this tie to all their solo projects. We've been doing a lot of that.

We're just getting the buzz going as big as we can in New York. Once we really have that established, we'll slowly move into the other markets at a higher level. We'd really like a booking agent to step in, someone who has roots carved in some pathways that we could follow like Deep Banana Blackout and get into that whole jam band circuit.

I think we fit into that, but yet we're completely different than anything else in that category because of our roots, like The Meters. Now everybody's talking about The Meters. But Stevo's been talking about The Meters for 15 years.