Latest news with #SwampDoggGetsHisPoolPainted
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Swamp Dogg, outsider artist who found his sound in Alabama, at center of new documentary playing in Birmingham
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — In 1969, Jerry Williams Jr. was working with a group called C & The Shells, writing a song for them called 'You are the Circus.' Williams, who had been singing and writing music professionally since he was 12 years old, had been a producer at Atlantic Records for several years at that point and had gone back and forth through Muscle Shoals to work with different artists, from Doris Duke to Duane Allman and many others. With C & The Shells, 'You are the Circus' became a hit pretty quickly, selling 30,000 copies in Chicago in its first week. That's when a local DJ called the record label about an issue with one of the original lyrics: 'You don't seem to give a damn about me at all.' 'Somebody in Chicago started complaining, saying they didn't like that word,' Williams said from his home in Los Angeles. 'They didn't like damn. Atlantic called me back.' Williams said the disc jockey, whom he didn't name but said pulled a lot of weight in the music business, got his way, with Atlantic telling Williams to take 'damn' out of the lyrics. Williams then tweaked it to 'You don't seem to care about me at all.' 'We didn't sell 30,000 more,' he said. For Williams, that moment was one of several where he felt burnt out by the music business, constantly trying to compromise himself. The way he describes it, he had had enough. Before long, Williams decided he needed a change. Taking what he learned from Muscle Shoals, he took on a new name, Swamp Dogg, and set out to make the music he wanted, no matter how raunchy or noncommercial it seemed. Williams is the focus of a new documentary, 'Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted,' which will premiere at the Sidewalk Film Center this Friday and play through the weekend. The documentary tells the story of Williams, his career, and how he found an audience through his uncompromising music. For Williams, his time in Muscle Shoals informed his sense of self to the point that many critics would later describe his sound, as heard on his debut album 'Total Destruction of Your Mind,' as a 'post-apocalyptic take on the Muscle Shoals' sound.' 'That's where I got my Phd for soul and country music,' he said. 'I learned more about what I was doing and started understanding where I was going and had visions of how I would get there.' As Swamp Dogg, Williams' muse often orbits around the subjects of sex and scatological humor, with a litany of racial epithets and swear words peppered through. At 82, Williams said there were times in his career where he questioned whether or not he was doing the right thing, whether he was putting himself out of work by not doing what others were. So far, it seems to be paying off. 'I'm not going to let anybody dictate what I have to say in my songs because that's what they are: my songs,' he said. With the gamble, Williams' work has received critical praise over the years, receiving glowing reviews in Rolling Stone and NPR. Many of his songs have been covered by mainstream artists, such as the Grateful Dead, Kid Rock, the Isley Brothers and Santana. Contemporary entertainers such as Johnny Knoxville of 'Jackass,' who is seen in the documentary, credit Williams as an influence as well. Williams' last album, 'Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St.,' is more of a country album, but has been received well in that community, too. 'As music changed, I changed with it, but on my own terms,' he said. 'I don't copy people.' So what keeps Williams going all these years later? 'My mortgage,' Williams jokes. All these damn bills.' Click here for showtimes 'Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted' will be playing at Sidewalk. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted' Review: A Free-Spirited Music Doc as Delightfully Weird as Its Subject
At one point in the free-wheeling music documentary 'Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted,' the eccentric 82-year-old musician is asked to describe his philosophy on life. 'Just be cool, you know?,' Swamp Dogg says. 'And it's fun being yourself. That's fun like a motherfucker. But you gotta find yourself.' It's a fitting summary of a creative life lived exactly on his own terms. A cult figure in certain music circles, Jerry Williams Jr. rose to prominence in the '70s for his satirical Southern soul records that were equally likely to feature radical political messages or cover art of Williams inside a hot dog bun covered in ketchup and mustard. He adopted the Swamp Dogg moniker to separate his public persona from his previous career as a Muscle Shoals producer who churned out gold records for other artists, though he continued to be a force in the music industry as a record label founder and producer who backed Dr. Dre's first records. And he continues to innovate into his eighties, experimenting with autotune banjo music from his home studio and touring regularly. More from IndieWire Acting Is More Than Performance: The Stars of 'Sinners,' 'Nickel Boys,' and More Offer Guidance How Chilling Sound Design, POV Shots, and an Uncanny Creature Create a Cinema of Perception in 'April' But in Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson's new documentary, Swamp Dogg's life of achievements takes a backseat to a more pressing matter: getting his pool painted. In an unspecified location in the San Fernando Valley, Swamp Dogg lives in a suburban enclave of creativity. His house is filled with loving freeloaders, primarily musician friends like Guitar Shorty, who asked to crash with him at one point or another and ended up staying for decades. The house is a hotbed for jam sessions and barbecues, but Swamp Dogg thinks it's missing one thing. He wants a picture of himself riding a rodent painted on the bottom of his pool so that it can be seen from the sky. 'Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted' begins with Swamp Dogg letting the pool painter into his backyard, but it quickly turns into a sprawling hang session featuring his housemates, neighbors like voice actor Tom Kenny, and his daughter. Swamp Dogg reminisces about his singular career, which eventually gives way to some obligatory archival footage, but the film is just as interested in celebrating the zest for life that the octogenarian currently enjoys. The result is a documentary that's as charmingly offbeat as its subject, whose greatest work of art might be the ridiculously fun existence he appears to be living out on a daily basis. Music documentaries have been almost irritatingly omnipresent in recent years, but 'Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted' is a refreshing change of pace that should delight even the most genre-fatigued viewer. The film never takes itself too seriously, gleefully pausing mid-interview to show Swamp Dogg answering his phone and politely telling someone that he'll have to call them back because he's in the middle of shooting a documentary. It certainly benefits from the fact that its subject will be unknown to many viewers, which frees the filmmakers from the expectation of a hagiographic trip down memory lane and permits them to focus on whatever interests their subject at a given moment. Of course, the approach is only possible because the man getting his pool painted is so damn charismatic. At 82-years-old, Swamp Dogg doesn't look a day over 60, and he boasts a razor-sharp mind and an infectious appetite for all of life's weird pleasures. Watching him meander through his backyard, talking shit with his buddies, exploring new sounds, and dryly calling every inconvenience a 'motherfucker' is the kind of offbeat delight that I would have gladly watched for three more hours. Seeing his excitement that a manufacturer has revived the lost art of writing profane messages on socks or proudly show his daughter his sparkly new shoes is more interesting than anything in his recording career, and Gale and Olson wisely sit back and let the current Swamp Dogg absorb the spotlight. More than any individual song or album, the film seeks to encapsulate the Swamp Dogg vibe. Effortlessly cool, thrilled to be alive, and mildly entertained by just about everything, the man offers what appears to be the perfect blueprint to stay in 2025. We can't all be Swamp Dogg, but it's nice to know the world still contains heroes worth looking up to. I sure hope he enjoys his new pool. A Magnolia Pictures release, 'Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted' opens in select theaters on Friday, May 2. Want to stay up to date on IndieWire's film and critical thoughts? to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers. Best of IndieWire The 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, Ranked Every IndieWire TV Review from 2020, Ranked by Grade from Best to Worst
