Veggas Pub in Riverwest hosted a fun evening of folk and singer-songwriter music on Saturday evening featuring artists Dead, Dead Swans and Wylie Jakobs along with band Pay the Devil closing.
Dead, Dead Swans is the singer-songwriter project of John Swan. His style encompasses somber folk and alternative country driven by Swan’s powerful vocals. Having lived in Illinois for some time, Swan moved to Milwaukee about seven years ago.
Originally involved in punk bands, he started Dead, Dead Swans in 2020 during quarantine. “I was doing an electronic synth bedroom pop project where everything was being done with a Midi controller and laptop,” Swan explains. “By the time I finished the album, I was so bored of it (laughs). Then my grandfather got COVID so I started pulling down all the old country records we used to listen to, and it reminded me how much I like stuff like Lucero, Tim Barry and Chuck Ragan. I started writing songs sounding like that and it kind of start as a joke; I recorded my first EP “October” remotely with two other dudes, and I was going to put it out under the name Dead, Dead Swans but not tell anyone it was me. But the songs just kept coming that way, and when shows came back, people started asking me to play.”
Swan originally played with just an acoustic guitar but has since incorporated banjo and stomp box. “The name was originally going to be Dead Swans but that’s a British hardcore band’s name,” he continues. “I added the second “Dead” with the comma because I like band names with punctuation marks.”
Dead, Dead Swans’ most recent album “Even Still, We Were Together” came out earlier this month. These songs expand Swan’s production with live instrumentation in mind, featuring harmonica and light percussion. Describing the album’s writing and subject matter, he shares, “My last record “Lenses” was very specifically a breakup album, and the songs were ordered by different stages of going through it. I was mixing and mastering that record as I was writing new songs that I was also recording as I was writing them. I probably wrote like 20 songs that I whittled down to ten. I took a few off that didn’t sound like they were finished, and I wasn’t originally aiming for a theme or anything with the record but it kind of ended up having one. There’s still breakup references throughout the album, and the last song is about losing my grandmother. The title is supposed to represent how even when you aren’t with someone anymore, you’re still together with them in moments and memories.”
He has been pleasantly surprised with its reception so far, saying, “Every day I love the record more.”
Dead, Dead Swans is currently on a Midwest tour through Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky and Ohio. He’s home for a few days before setting out on another leg while joined by Hemlock Chaser. In Milwaukee he plays Last Rites on May 6, The Peeb Cave on May 9 and Bremen Cafe on May 23. He’s also got upcoming shows in Chicago, Appleton, Evansville and Minneapolis, plus he plays Moonrunners Fest in Newport, Kentucky on May 3.
Wylie Jakobs is the singer-songwriter project of Jake Hess. Previously in thrash metal band Ahab’s Ghost, he is known for his deeply personal songwriting and bold yet gentle vocals. Hess has focused on Wylie Jakobs since the dissolution of Ahab’s Ghost, although he started the project before then.
“I’ve been writing Wylie Jakobs songs since 2016-2017,” he explains. “I did it for a few years and then decided to stop, but I knew that it would come back once I got inspired again. When the pandemic happened I still had to go to work every day, but I had a lot of time to play guitar after work.”
Wylie Jakobs finished his first record “Unmarked Graves” in early quarantine. Then he put out “Seven Days” in 2023, which he wrote as an exercise while stuck home with COVID. Lyrical themes encompass topics like love, loneliness and self-perception. “I wrote one song every day for a week and then didn’t touch them for a year,” Hess continues. “When I went back to them I thought they were pretty good, and Ahab’s Ghost had been done for a little bit at that point so I suddenly had a spark of inspiration for music again. I want to write good tunes with this project, but I also want to write whatever I’m feeling in the moment.”
His latest single “Salt & Charcoal” was released in February. He shares about the track, “I had a couple of deaths earlier in the year and for a bit was in a real shitty place. I was walking around ghostly and felt like I was being pretty bad company, and that song is kind of on the nose about it. But that’s how I feel I need to write right now. I’m a very fortunate person in many ways in my life, but I do think about some pretty dark shit a lot, and songwriting has become a way to express those emotions no matter how intense they are. I think “Salt & Charcoal” is about the idea that no matter how someone’s acting towards you, you never know how troubled they might be. Maybe they just had a shit day.”
Hess is also a talented visual artist, and over the years has found a solid ebb and flow between that and music. “I’m heavy in music mode right now,” he contends. “I’m humming songs at work and remembering them after work and then writing them.”
Wylie Jakobs plays The Records Department in Woodstock, Illinois on June 22. He also plans to collaborate with Dead, Dead Swans on Saturday matinee song swaps at Bremen Cafe throughout the summer.
Pay the Devil comprises vocalist-banjoist Ivan Eisenberg, vocalist-mandolin player Matt Gibbons, upright bassist Jackie Lalley, guitarist Ivan Wayne Baker and drummer (previously cellist) Kent Heberling. Formed in 2010-2011, the band incorporates Americana, folk and bluegrass into their sound; known for nautical themes in their lyrics, Pay the Devil’s style has been dubbed “shantygrass.”
“Our first show we ever played was actually here,” Eisenberg remarked about Veggas Pub. “I used to live around the corner and we would just play in my yard.”
Eisenberg and Baker met via Milwaukee Hurling Club; Eisenberg met Heberling at work, Gibbons is Baker’s cousin, and Lalley joined Pay the Devil shortly before the pandemic. “When we started we were like a sea shanty band,” Eisenberg recalls. “I grew up sailing, and on tall ships the devils are the two longest planks at the bottom of the boat. To pay a devil is to pound cotton and tar in between them to keep them waterproof. If you broke a rule or something you’d have to climb down and deal with it. The expression “there will be hell to pay” comes from there being a devil to pay, so it’s like the worst possible thing you’d have to do on a boat.”
Describing the band’s songwriting process, Gibbons shares, “Usually somebody will have a chorus and two verses, and then we’ll workshop it to figure out what the beginnings and ends will sound like. It usually takes a good year before a song finds its way to the stage. We all like this band and like the music that we’re playing, and the people who watch tend to pick up on that very quickly.”
Pay the Devil put out their third album in 2023, titled “Turn to Gold.” Eisenberg touches on what the band wanted to do with this record, “We’ve had this big backlog of songs because we write new ones all the time. A bunch of Jackie’s songs are on this record which was the most fun thing about it for me. She’s our best vocalist and I think she’s our best songwriter too, plus she has new ones that we’re working on for our next record. Kent also switched to a full drum set for this record; we always have spoons and a washboard which is awesome, but throwing in toms and cymbals becomes a really neat trick. The title comes from one of Jackie’s songs, and our guitar player’s childhood friend is an artist who was really excited to throw a bunch of historical and biblical references to gold in for the album cover. We recorded the whole thing at Kent’s house; he lives in an church that still has a stage so we set it up all there.”
“It went oddly well,” Gibbons about recording. “It was a strange day. We said “hey let’s record this album” and then three hours later we were done. Then we bought $120 worth of Chinese food and feasted like kings.”
The band plays Irish Fest every year, plus they’ve had neat opportunities to play gigs like Chill on the Hill and Summerfest. “We’ve gotten really lucky,” Eisenberg said. “We went all the way to Sherman, New York to play the Great Blue Heron Music Festival and they treated us like we were rockstars. It was so much fun.”
Pay the Devil have some fun shows coming up, including one at the Harley-Davidson Museum and a cemetery walk in October.