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Brown Bird

Initially formed as the solo vehicle for singer/songwriter David Lamb, Brown Bird was a project rooted in American folk but with influences that ranged from traditional Balkan music to classic psychedelia. During the latter half of the 2000s, Brown Bird swelled to a trio, then a quintet before eventually settling into the collaborative duo of Lamb and his wife, fiddler and multi-instrumentalist MorganEve Swain. Based in Rhode Island, they remained productive and musically adventurous into the next decade, releasing albums like 2011's Salt for Salt and 2013's Fits of Reason before Lamb was diagnosed with leukemia. Following his death in 2014, Swain completed Brown Bird's final album, the posthumously released Axis Mundi. In 2003, having lived briefly in Seattle, Lamb moved east to Portland, Maine, where he started working on a handful of folk tunes that compared favorably to the spare, rough-hewn work of artists like Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Iron & Wine. His friends, Jerusha and Jeremy Robinson, were soon brought on board to round out Brown Bird's sound, and the trio self-released their debut full-length, Tautolougy, in 2006. Ensconcing themselves in the emerging national indie folk scene, the band self-released a follow-up, Such Unrest, the following year before they were picked up by Portland, Maine's Peapod Recordings. Their first album on that label, The Bottom of the Sea, came out in 2008; Lamb undertook a solo tour of the U.S. in support of that release soon after. While he was on the road, Lamb met his future wife and collaborator, Rhode Island-based multi-instrumentalist MorganEve Swain, as well as steel guitarist and dobro player Mike Samos, both of whom were soon brought on board as bandmembers. Brown Bird's fourth studio album, The Devil Dancing, was released in November 2009 and was the first to feature Swain's contributions. Now living together in Providence, Rhode Island, the band effectively became a duo for 2011's Salt for Salt and 2013's philosophically minded Fits of Reason. While on the road in support of the latter, Lamb, who had been in poor health for several months, was diagnosed with leukemia. He underwent a successful bone marrow transplant and spent a year at home with Swain working on new material while recovering. By spring of the following year, however, an aggressive relapse had taken root and Lamb succumbed to the disease on April 5, 2014. Swain, with the help of her brother Spencer Swain and engineer Seth Manchester, set about completing work on Brown Bird's final album. Axis Mundi was released in April 2015, a year after Lamb's death. Swain later formed her own project, the Huntress and Holder of Hands.
© James Christopher Monger /TiVo
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Discography

10 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller

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