Patrick Sweany brings ‘Ancient Noise’ to Bend

Published 12:00 am Thursday, September 13, 2018

Patrick Sweany sounded like he was still trying to convince himself that the sessions for new album “Ancient Noise” actually happened during a recent chat with GO! Magazine.

The blues-rock guitarist recorded at Sam Phillips Recording Studio in Memphis, Tennessee — the studio founded in 1960 by Phillips, who started Sun Records and helped launch the careers of Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and countless other rock ’n’ roll pioneers.

“I could go on and on about this,” he said while traveling between tour stops from Denver to Fort Collins, Colorado. He and his four-piece band will perform at Volcanic Theatre Pub on Saturday.

“To be in a place designed by the guy who invented the music that gave me a life — gave me just about everything I have,” Sweany said, “I don’t know how else I would ever have learned to express myself and be a real human without it. So to walk in there — and Sam’s son Jerry met us at the door, and he’s an amazing producer and songwriter in his own right, and he was just so warm and welcoming and nice to us. And he is probably the coolest person alive, because he learned to be cool from Elvis.

“… And this is just walking in the lobby of this joint,” he continued. “So already, all this is going on. We walk in, and we hear Charles Hodges warming up on the organ — I think he was playing ‘At Last’ or something like that, an instrumental, just getting loose for the session. It was some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard in my life.”

Hodges, a session keyboardist and organist known for his work with Al Green, joined the sessions at the behest of producer Matt Ross-Spang (Jason Isbell, John Prine, Margo Price), who is based at the studio. They weren’t the only heavy-hitters involved — former Wilco drummer Ken Coomer and longtime friend and bassist Ted Pecchio completed Sweany’s recording quartet.

“With Ken and then with Charles as well — I mean, I was very nervous, obviously, because I’ve been listening to Al Green records my entire life,” Sweany said. “But he was such a sweet and kind man. … He would throw out an idea, and obviously, we would try it. Even on the song ‘Baby Every Night,’ the main-hook lick was very different, and Charles said, ‘Try this with this drumbeat and then we’ll hit this lick.’ And we cut it and me, Ted and Ken were still like, ‘OK, we’ll give it a try,’ but we weren’t hearing it. And immediately upon playback, that was the take — second take. That’s what’s on the record.”

The resulting record is perhaps the most soulful Sweany has recorded, blending classic R&B and rockabilly sounds with the guitarist’s raw fingerpicking style. His previous album, 2015’s “Daytime Turned to Nighttime,” leaned toward his acoustic side after a number of more rocking releases, but while that record’s sound and feel were planned out by Sweany beforehand, “Ancient Noise” evolved as the musicians played.

“Normally, I’ll have (the songs) all worked out — tempos, phrasing, all those things, where the groove sits,” Sweany said. “I’ll always write with the drumbeat while I’m writing lyrics so the lyrical phrasing is just easier. It quickens the process — hey, I can’t sing the phone book here; I got four syllables, enough breath for four syllables. So you’ve gotta figure out a way to say that very small. So that process is always going on whenever I make a record, but I came in with a little less of a framework and having the other guys (work on it).”

Sweany, known for songs such as “Them Shoes” (which recently had a resurgence thanks to a name-drop from actor Matthew McConaughey, who used it to prepare for his role in “The Dark Tower”) and for past collaborations with The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, has focused equally on acoustic and electric playing since his all-acoustic, 1999 solo debut “I Wanna Tell You.” But he started out strictly on acoustic as a kid, sitting in on jam sessions of Gordon Lightfoot and Pete Seeger songs with his father’s church band.

At about 14, Sweany discovered John Hammond Jr. and the blues. He also bought his first electric guitar around this time, and began “just squeaking and squawking on it.” That lasted a day before his father had enough.

“There was an extension cord out to this little camper next to the shed in our house, and my guitar and the amplifier were out there when I got home from school,” Sweany said. “And I was not allowed to bring them in the house anymore. My dad, he’s an acoustic guitar player and pretty die-hard folkie, and he just said, ‘Nah. If you want to play the acoustic, you can play that inside.’ And it was cold out and I had this weird little space — ineffective space heater — but I stayed out there just to prove it. But it was a long time before I felt comfortable at all playing electric guitar in public.”