Brown Bird was an American

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...

group, originally formed in 2003 in

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

as a solo project by David Lamb. Adding and changing its membership over time, the band's final incarnation was the duo of Lamb and his wife MorganEve Swain. The band ceased in 2014 following Lamb's death from leukemia.

History

Lamb formed Brown Bird in 2003 in

but moved soon thereafter to Portland, Maine. The line-up soon included Jerusha Robinson on

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

and her husband Jeremy Robinson on multiple instruments. The Robinsons left the group in 2009, leaving Lamb, MorganEve Swain on

fiddle A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, th ...

, and Mike Samos on

lap steel guitar The lap steel guitar, also known as a Hawaiian guitar, is a type of steel guitar without pedals that is typically played with the instrument in a horizontal position across the performer's lap. Unlike the usual manner of playing a traditional ...

and

dobro Dobro is an American brand of resonator guitars, currently owned by Gibson and manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic term for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar. The Dobro was originally ...

in the line-up. In 2010, with the departure of Samos, the band had become a duo. Brown Bird played the

Newport Folk Festival Newport Folk Festival is an annual American folk-oriented music festival in Newport, Rhode Island, which began in 1959 as a counterpart to the Newport Jazz Festival. It was one of the first modern music festivals in America, and remains a foca ...

for the first time in 2011 and were based in

Providence, Rhode Island Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...

at the time. They have toured with The Devil Makes Three. Brown Bird went on hiatus in early 2013 after David Lamb was diagnosed with

leukemia Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia and pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and result in high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or ' ...

. Lamb died from the disease on April 5, 2014. In April 2015 Brown Bird's final album, ''Axis Mundi'', was released produced by MorganEve Swain. Most of Axis Mundi was written and recorded while David was recuperating at home from his bone marrow transplant. It peaked at #12 on the Billboard Heatseeker Chart. In 2021, Brown Bird's "Bilgewater" was featured as the theme song of the

Syfy Syfy (formerly Sci-Fi Channel, later shortened to Sci Fi; stylized as SYFY) is an American basic cable channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast's NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. Lau ...

television series ''

Resident Alien In law, an alien is any person (including an organization) who is not a citizenship, citizen or a nationality, national of a specific country, although definitions and terminology differ to some degree depending upon the continent or region. ...

''.

Musical style

Brown Bird is influenced by

American folk music The term American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as ''traditional music'', ''traditional folk music'', ''contemporary folk music'', ''vernacular music,'' or ''roots music''. Many traditional songs have been sung ...

, Gypsy music, and bluegrass. According to Aimsel Ponti of the ''

Portland Press Herald The ''Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram'' is a morning daily newspaper with a website that serves southern Maine and is focused on the greater metropolitan area around Portland, Maine, in the United States. Founded in 1862, its roots e ...

'' " eir sound is one that lives on the darker side of American folk, ensconced in Eastern European roots music."

Works

*''Tautology'' (2007) *''Such Unrest'' (Spring 2007) * ''Bottom of the Sea'' (2008) * ''The Devil Dancing'' (2009) * ''The Sound of Ghosts'' (EP, March 2011) * ''Salt for Salt'' (October 2011) * ''Fits of Reason'' (April 2013) * ''The Teeth of Sea and Beasts - The Poetry of Brown Bird'' (Book, April 2014) * ''The Brown Bird Christmas Album'' (November 2014) * ''Axis Mundi'' (April 2015)

References

External links

* * * {{Authority control American folk musical groups Musical groups established in 2003 Musical groups from Portland, Maine Musical groups from Providence, Rhode Island Musical groups from Seattle Musical groups disestablished in 2014

History

Musical style

Works

References

Further reading

External links