“FINAL APPROACH” IS THE CENTERPIECE OF SWAMP DOGG CONTEMPLATES THE AFTERLIFE NEW ALBUM OUT JUNETEENTH

One of the most anticipated album releases of Black Music Month is Swamp Dogg Contemplates The Afterlife, which by the reckoning of the iconoclastic and much celebrated artist, is his 31st (non-compilation) full-length in a career that stretches back a phenomenal eight decades. The album, out from S-Curve Records digitally on Juneteenth (6/19), with CD and vinyl to follow on July 10, includes “Final Approach,” produced by Swamp Dogg along with along with S-Curve founder Steve Greenberg, Mike Mangini and Sam Hollander, Grammy winners who’ve individually and collectively produced artists including Joss Stone, Tom Jones, the O’Jays, Betty Wright & the Roots, Andy Grammer, Jonas Brothers, Hanson, Digable Planets and Public Enemy.

Swamp Dogg is fresh from appearances earlier this month at the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles and, most recently, a sold-out performance at New York’s Mercury Lounge in conjunction with the Blue Note Festival. Now, on the cusp of his 84th birthday, he commented on the song that is making its debut simultaneously with the album noting, “‘Final Approach’ uses an airliner metaphor but it’s more about a home coming than dealing with the end of life. That’s something that’s inevitable but the life I’ve lived has been truly fulfilling and I remain both hopeful and thankful. I cite some of the music pioneers – Sam Cooke, Otis Redding and Chuck Willis — who went before their time while I’ve come as far as I have for as long as I have and that’s something spiritually uplifting. The great work of those guys lives on, and so do I which is why I’m OK with this ‘final approach.’ I’ve been blessed and that’s something to sing about.”

The album includes three tracks that have been released in the lead up to Juneteenth: “Waka Waka Waka,” which features a guest vocal by Gary U.S. Bonds (with whom Swamp Dogg collaborated on numerous hit songs in the 1970s), “Searching For Heaven,” another track that is specific to the album’s theme, and “Acid Tongue,” originally by Jenny Lewis, with whom Swamp Dogg has recorded in recent years.

One of the few first-generation soul artists still recording and touring, Swamp Dogg’s music has been embraced by successive generations who are taken with his musical mastery and iconoclastic approach to both his craft and life writ large. Testimony to his ecumenism is found in the fact that he’s been warmly embraced within the Americana world, and in his recent headlining appearance aboard the SiriusXM Outlaw Country Cruise. He has also made waves of late with the release of the critically lauded documentary film Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted, currently streaming.

Of special note is the album art, conceived by Grammy-winner David Gorman, depicting Swamp Dogg surrounded by tomes dealing with mortality, examining a comic book in the style of a Renaissance illuminated manuscript.

In connection with the release of Swamp Dogg Contemplates The Afterlife, and just off the heels of his sold-out performance at the Mercury Lounge in Manhattan, tour dates have been announced for this spring and summer, with club, concert and festival shows that include stops in Upstate New York, New England, Southern California and elsewhere, with more to be announced.