Music In Motion

A couple of years ago, Melbourne singer-songwriter Andrew Swift was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to record an album, The Way We Were Raised, in El Paso, Texas, with Gabriel Gonzalez and Jim Ward of At The Drive-In and Sparta fame. Back in Australia, the peripatetic Swift pulled together a band, The Rattlesnake Choir, to tour that album. Quickly realising that here was the sound he'd been looking for, he took the band back into the studio, in Melbourne this time, with producer Matt Voigt, whose CV includes records for The Nation Blue, The Smith Street Band and Paul Kelly. The result is the new EP, Up With The Anchor.

“We really feel like we've managed to capture what we do live,” Swift suggests of the EP, “which is something I seem to have struggled with in the past, using session musicians or doing all the layers myself. So it was really great to capture the feel that we have as a band.

“The drummer who played on the album [the rhythm tracks were recorded in Melbourne before Swift took the recordings to El Paso], Nathan Hill, was actually my drum teacher in high school. We've managed to stay in touch over the years – he's only a few years older than myself. It was great because I was friends with everyone [in the band] individually over the years but they hadn't met, so it was good to get everyone together. Matt [Davenport, bass] used to be in a band called Gus & Frank, when I was in Race The Fray, so we used to do a few shows together, and the guitarist [Colin Dawson] is the youngest one of us, but he plays a Strat like a 60 year old, it sounds so thick!” he laughs. “He used to actually teach guitar in a music store that I was working at. So I just sort of picked out the guys that would have the right feel for what I had in mind and what we'd done over in El Paso.”

As it happens, there is one track on the EP, Restless Hearts, which was recorded in El Paso. “I've got family in the States so I try and get over there about once a year, and I happened to go over again last year, not long after we'd recorded the first three tracks of the EP. And I really wanted to have Gabe [Gonzalez] to still be a part of the process. He was already mixing the rest of the EP for me, so I thought, 'I'm already over there, we'll do a day in the studio and pump out this new song.' That was just me and Gabe – he did a little bit of guitar on it for me and I did the percussion and backing vocals.”

After Race The Fray broke up in 2008, Swift started working as a solo singer-songwriter, which suited his gypsy soul just fine, and many of the songs on Up With The Anchor reflect his propensity to always be on the move. “In the past few years I've had the travel bug and I've always loved being on the road. I think growing up in a small town, you want to escape from the routine; it's great to get somewhere else where you don't know anyone or the culture or anything like that. So I've always had a bit of a desire to move on or uproot, and that shows, especially in Refer To The Atlas and Restless Heart. It's even in the title of the EP, Up With The Anchor, that general concept.”