|
|
||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 Dolphins Swimming Minimal emotive folk music BIO Dolphins Swimming is a two-piece Indie/folk/Americana band formed in Chicago in 2008. Travis Lee Wiggins is the lead songwriter, singing and switching off between guitar and banjo as well as taking care of producing/recording duties. Allison Trumbo & Elisabeth Victoria Johnson overlay sweet melodic violin lines. The music is sparse and up-close and the content of the songs are brutally honest & personal. The recordings have captured the musicians in solitary without overdubs, a true image of their playing. Their first album, Dolphins Swimming (self-titled) releases September 23rd, 2011 on Sweet Goodness in addition to a bonus 5-track B-SIDES EP. MEMBERS: This text will be replaced by the flash music player.
HISTORY Dolphins Swimming is a two-piece Indie/folk/Americana band formed in Chicago in 2008. Travis Lee Wiggins is the lead songwriter, singing and switching off between guitar and banjo as well as taking care of producing/recording duties. Allison Trumbo & Elisabeth Victoria Johnson overlay sweet melodic violin lines. The music is sparse and up-close and the content of the songs are brutally honest & personal. The recordings have captured the musicians in solitary without overdubs, a true image of their playing. Their first album, Dolphins Swimming (self-titled) releases September 23rd, 2011 on Sweet Goodness in addition to a bonus 5-track B-SIDES EP.
The project was birthed after Trumbo had worked on Essex Chanel’s (Travis Lee Wiggins’s solo project) Love is Proximity, a 42 song epic 4-disk collection where Trumbo played violin on over half the tracks. The two recognized that there was a certain energy they had together and decided to create a project where they could work more collaboratively.
The process began with the two making & recording music spontaneously. Wiggins took these raw tracks and molded the best of them into songs. He tried to do something different with the content of the songs compared to his previous sporadic songwriting with his other projects. As inspiration, he took the previous year of his life, 2009-2010, and tried to write about what happened to him during that tumultuous year. “The songs that I really loved to sing were the ones that meant the most to me, something that is personal.” These experiences weren’t the happiest moments of his life by any means. “I wanted to capture it all….I don’t think music should be all about happiness or love, it should also be about coping, and trying to live with the way you find yourself or the situation you are in. Sometimes things aren’t always happy. I wanted brutal honesty. I didn’t want to hide behind sweet sounding phrases that in the end didn’t mean anything or could be open to interpretation.”
“Country” was Wiggins missing his days growing up in Indiana and not being gridlocked in Chicago. It’s a song about missing youth. “Rule of Thumb”, “It Wasn’t Long Ago”, and “Stuck in Your Ways” are about longing for a better life, and trying to change. “Lie” & “Uneternally Yours” hauntingly describe other parts of human relationships that aren’t so apt to be represented in a song.
Wiggins produced & recorded Dolphins Swimming. “What I wanted to do was really capture the way Allison and I sounded together in a room. Some may call it stripped down, but I think the production of the album is an honest representation of the songs and who we are. I didn’t want a million overdubs or anything double tracked. I don’t even know if people know what that sounds like anymore. You have 2 piece bands that on their recording it’s essentially every part of them doubled or quadrupled and played in chorus. I wanted this to sound like we had set are stuff up right in front of you while you’re sitting on your couch at home.”
During the recording they hit a wall. Allison was graduating Grad School and teaching violin full-time, and the time Dolphins Swimming had together to make music decreased. For a year the project mulled along with work going extremely slow.
Wiggins then shelfed the project for months until he hunted around for another violin player. Through some mutual friends he found Elisabeth Johnson. “We had the template set up for the band. Elisabeth was really talented….but she understandably wanted to work on new music, and I wanted to finish this album before I started new stuff,” Wiggins says. Wiggins then decided to go ahead and finish the album himself. There were 5 songs left that had piano demos which Wiggins had written for violin. He finished those tracks on piano and then added little “embellishments” here and there over the album where needed.
With the recording complete, Wiggins, with the help of his most trusted friends, picked the best songs that would be included on an album. He put together 4 additional tracks that were taken from sessions that added flavor to the project. 13 songs are Dolphins Swimming, and there are 5 songs from the sessions on a bonus B-SIDES EP. Both the LP & EP release the first day of Autumn, September 23rd, 2011. The album is available through iTunes and most related downloadable services online. NAME ORGIN Why Dolphins Swimming? Wiggins explained to Trumbo that he saw writing melodies like dolphins swimming—each one never jumps together—they all jump when they need to and dive down when others jump. It was a symbol that found it’s way to be the project’s name, and the idea of taking a couple instruments and making them swim together in harmony. |
 |
||||||||
 |
 |
 |
||||||||
© Sweet Goodness Music