Seems like Dominik, Swamp Trains bassist, has been out hustling to find gigs because we have a few lined up now which is cool. The next one being a trip back to Bellwald to inaugurate the Bellagio Lounge & Bar on December 18th, a new place for the local fauna and a good one if you consider their choice for the band! ;-)
He asked me to translate the band’s bio into English for the flier he’s sending around which I did this morning. However I must admit here that I had found what had originally been posted on our (now gone updated 2018) MySpace page a bit dull so I decided to spice it up, hopefully this one is better:
Big Blowin’ Blaze on vocals, cigar box guitar and harmonica. Blaze took a plunge into the blues one wild birthday party night, woke up the next day like a zombie possessed and marched down off his mountain side to raid the corner store of all its harmonicas. Locking himself in the barn for weeks on end, oblivious of the growing concern caused by his peculiar behavior and on the brink of madness, he was save by his dog “Spot” who heroically climbed the hefty steam engine BBQ to jump and torpedo his way through a small and only window… in slow motion. What happened next remains a mystery but it was reported later that Blaze then proceeded to cut down his forest’s oldest oak tree, planted by an ancestor years forgotten, and made Switzerland’s first cigar box guitar with his trusted swiss army knife; unrelenting in keeping the spirit of the blues alive in his home.
Alain Pache aka Cut Finger was a professional guitarist and stage wizard with hundreds of concerts to boast when he was struck by a falling oak tree, savagely cut by a demented “wild man of the woods” as an understandably shocked Alain reported to the authorities when he was able to speak again, three weeks later. The alleged “wild man” was never apprehended and some even doubt his existence. Cut Finger is now a professional blues guitarist. He also teaches guitar at one of Geneva’s best school of music (at least for guitar lessons), is active within the group “Gospel Center” in Lausanne as well as his own “Cut Finger Band”.
Bass player Nikworks has played the blues with FRANK BARTH & the blue step walkers (F) – BONNY B. (KH) – HARPRISE & his Blues Crew (CH) – MARK MIDDLE (CAN) – ELIOT CHAMBERS (USA) – FAMILY STYLE (CH) – GIANNI SPANO (CH) – ANDY Egert (Swiss Blues Award Winner 2010); to name a few hopefully showing just how much of a professional Blues, Soul and Funk bass player he was. One afternoon while looking for mushrooms he discovered the inanimate body of a man stuck beneath a fallen oak tree, an unfortunate yet fateful encounter that turned out to be determinant to a drastic devolution…
Meanwhile, while hiking through a forest not too far from home, Rattlebrained (washboard, percussion & occasional vocals), spotted the remains of an old fallen oak tree. It reminded him of an old country blues song once heard on the radio which he began to hum while absentmindedly sticking a few branches from it into his knapsack to carve into rhythm bones. Somewhat artistically inclined, he designed the band’s logo (check out our t-shirts and other cool gear!) and also plays with the Bluesman Dave Boy Ferry’s Crawfish Blues Band.
:P