The Swongos, a three-piece instrumental Surf band from the St. Croix River Valley, are opening for the London-based psych band Los Bitchos at 7th Street Entry on July 10. Tickets are available here.
Jam in the Stream recently caught up with Swongos’ drummer Brian Liggett.
JitS: How long have The Swongos been around?
This band has been around since 2018. We had played together, I had played with (guitarist and lead) Tom (Mangelsen) in several bands. He was a bass player until he switched to guitar. We did punk and blues and metal and reggae and funk.
Liggett said that Mangelsen and his wife Lisa, along with another player, were originally in a short-lived alt rock around 2006. This band, however, blends a few different styles and sub-genres including surf, exotica and spy.
JitS: What is Exotica?
I kind of think of it as lounge music. Very low key, typically instrumental. It is retro but has a space-aged vibe to it — vibraphone or animal noises (such as bird and jungle sounds). Sometimes you will hear really weird animal noises. … It is moody. It is hard to describe. We don’t play exactly that but we add elements to our sound.
JitS: Tell me about Spy — it sounds like some James Bond or Get Smart-type shit?
That is kind of that. I am sure people describe it in different ways, but something you would hear in the soundtrack in a spy movie with spooky and exciting elements to it. These are all of our interpretation of these things. We are not true purists. We are not a pure, traditional surf group. These elements we think are neat, we take those and come up with arrangements that sort of emulate that but not quite. Even if we tried, our own personalities are going to shine through.
Promotional Los Bitchos tour artwork by Olya Dyer.
JitS: What did you all know about Los Bitchos?
I hadn’t heard of them until we found out we were being considered for this show. ... (Tom) had heard of them and kind of reached out just like he does at a ton of places. You only get a few different responses back. They happened to get back to us. (Mangelsen and I) played First Ave years ago (with a band called Boogiewack opening for Chicago jazz, hip-hop funk fusion band Liquid Soul). We have been trying to get back into that club.
JitS: What are the influences in this band?
We are music lovers. We all grew up in a small town. There wasn’t a heck of a lot to do. We skateboarded and jammed with our buddies. For some reason, there were a lot of kids into punk and funk music in the St. Croix River Valley. We were interested in playing funk. In that era, in the late 80s and early 90s, the (Red Hot) Chili Peppers were doing that punk-funk combo. That melded into the metal in the 90s. We also really geeked out on weird psychedelic music and progressive rock, Frank Zappa and Mr. Bungle, which were taking multiple different styles and morphing them. When you are a hyperactive kid with a short attention span, it switches up quite a bit. … Lisa was really into punk rock. You could set your watch to her playing. She always had that punk style and now she is branching out. She was a huge fan of The Muffs and we were all into the Pixies.
JitS: Being an instrumental band, is there much improvisation in the mix?
BL: We do quite a bit of improvisation, which is kind of fun. That first album we had, the second track on the second side is mostly improvised. We will never play that the same way twice. It is not always great but it is always fun. …
Liggett mentioned the band’s song “Zombie Duck Dive” as an example of their work with a lot of improv built in.
Only the first part of that song is composed. And then there is a melody that we pretty much follow and then it breaks into whatever we want to do. We will try to work with dynamics. And then I will try to throw Lisa off. She is playing a steady bass line and then pedals. Depending on how we are feeling or how much time we are trying to cover — sometimes we are playing where we have to do three hours — we will branch off.
The Swongos cover a song that The Pixies called “Theme from Narc”
I had never heard it before we started covering it. I still haven’t heard the original version. I don’t want to change it by knowing what it’s supposed to do.