Bio | Promo Images | Video | Press Kit PDF | Poster PDF
"Patootified" (EBR102; 2010) Reviews
Maverick Magazine | Fatea Magazine UK | Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange |
"Nowheresville" (EBR101; 2008) Reviews
Folk World | Leicester Bangs | Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange | NetRhythms, UK | The Sun Times | Keeps Me Alive | Dirty Linen| Endicott Performing Arts Centre |
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Maverick Magazine
Terry Young and Sandra Swannell, former members of Canadian folk band Tanglefoot, are now the duo My Sweet Patootie, performing their own unique blend of swing, country and rural roots music. This second album was recorded at their own Nowheresville Studios and features just the two of them, Terry handling lead and harmony vocals and guitars and Sandra on lead and harmony vocals and violin. The songs are all duo originals with the exception of a brilliant re-creation of 1980s hit Hit Me With Your Best Shot and the old pop standardPolkadots & Moonbeams. The latter is given a smoochy, late-night jazz café treatment with Terry handling the lead vocal in a classic 1940s crooning style. Sandra takes the vocal honours on the gentle, reflective ballad Moments, she also swings neatly on violin and vocals on the exuberant Joyful Noise. Throughout the playing is superb and the vocal harmonies exquisite.____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Featuring two ex-members of Tanglefoot, Terry Young and Sandra Swannell, My Sweet Patootie take the essence of their former outfit and distill it into something that little stronger with it's own distinct flavour. "Patootified!" takes elements of western swing and old timey music that updates the flapper feel and gives it a real twenty first century pizazz. When you see songs with titles like "Lollygagging", "Coffee Bean" and "Fox & Possum", you know that you're headed for a blast from the past. Young And Swannell hit you with a delightful album with a hundred years in it's soul.
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Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange
By Mark S. TuckerThe more I listen to this duo, the more I'm minded of a certain amount of kindredness to the Asylum Street Spankers, as the levels of cleverness, acumen, lightheartedness, and sophisticated ways with melodies and lyrics never fail to delight and intrigue. Hell, all ya need do is glom the song titles to get an idea of what you're in for: Daddy Needs a New Tractor, Lollygagging, That Love Thing, etc. My Sweet Patootie is having an ongoing love affair with the glamors and mindset of earlier times—say, the 20s to the 50s—and, like the Spankers, wrap themselves around the era like a mink stole…in this case, with wheatstraw and hayseed.
The Patootie duo, however, is oft a good deal more serious than the Asylum gang, more prosaic, as This Old Quilt well demonstrates. The song could accompany a Norman Rockwell exhibition in Greenwich Village, and I mean that complimentarily, as ol' Normie, despite his Boy Scout / propaganda bent, was a master artist. Sandra Swannell takes on the lion's (er, lionesses'!) share of lead vocals while rasping a lively violin, with Terrence Young oft harmonizing and fingerpicking his guitar with élan and dexterity. The guy is a master of his craft, so catch the complicated patterns in lively tempo in Joyful Noise and other tracks. Young carries the lead spot vocally as well but not as often as Swannell. He's not bad at all, but she's better, so the decision was wise.
Patootified is not as ribaFld as their previous, Nowheresville (here), but it's just as elegant, perhaps more so for the steeped period flavorings, with Young's vocals helping tremendously on that count, especially during Coffee Bean, Swannell's backing vox simul-synched as a sort of one-woman Andrews Sisters behind him. Thus, o ye of the gentry and of less genteel origins, put on the spats, wax the moustache, and wrap a necklace of slinky pearls atop your amour's décolletage, then head for the speakeasy whence the meeting of Chicago, prairie, and working slobs have the gents 'n ladies suavely downing whiskey highballs and pitchers of beer in Fitzgeraldian backrooms letting out into Steinbeckian nights.
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FolkWorld, 2009
My Sweet Patootie is a Canadian duo formed by singer and guitarist Terry Young and singer and violinist Sandra Swanell. The duo is backed by three musicians on bass, percussion and guitars. The album contains fourteen (mostly) self written songs. The album starts with the nice song The Marble which shows exactly what the band is, a duo with songs that tell a story brought with a lot of pleasure and inner drive. Listen to Sweet Patootie Rag and you hear their positive happiness shine all over the place. The rest of the album stays a bit in this style, not much surprises just nice music that puts a smile on the face. Good instrumental work, a fresh album brought with humour and passion.Eelco Schilder
FolkWorld Issue 40 11/2009
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If Americana is as broad a church as we'd like to think it is, let's include My Sweet Patootie. Their album, Nowheresville (Easy Bake Records) certainly includes elements of Americana, but they appear to great take great delight in mixing up jazz, gypsy, swing and chirpy, semi-humorous wordplay. It could have been one to avoid, but it's not. Sandra Swannell and Terry Young seem to be having so much fun that you'd have to be a committed sourpuss to take any offence.
Leicester Bangs
Americana Round-Up UK__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I've commented previously that it's damnably difficult to find comedic musics, so this duo / band comes as a huge relief in straitened times. Violist, violinist, fiddler Sandy Swannell was principal violist with the Georgian Bay Symphony, a member of a string quartet, and she's recorded with Stompin'Tom Connors. She's a great vocalist too! In the Canadian band Tanglefoot, she met mandolinist, banjo player, guitarist, and vocalist Terry Young, and the two hit it off so well, with such a penchant for the tongue-in-cheek and ribald, that they formed their own combo, attracting one of Oscar Peterson's bassists, Dave Young, and Chilliwack drummer Bucky Berger.
Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange
Edited by: David N. Pyles, Copyright 2008
By Mark S. Tucker
As might be expected, the tone is light and breezy, but, as might not be quite so standard, the two have deceptively erudite ways with their instruments. Young's an extremely talented picker, and, if you don't listen carefully, you'll miss a world of string wizardry. The guy puts so much into each measure and can change up with such jaw-dropping dexterity that while you're dazzled at one passage, he's already half way through the next. Swannell's equally skilled on her axe, adopting a strongly gypsy flavor with loose Cajun fluidity flowing like quicksilver atop Young's patterns and progressions.
The humorous elements lie, of course, in the lyrics, so, when it comes to gardens and The Dandiest of Dandelions, we hear:
Have you ever looked closely at a blade of grass?
The way it keeps growing is a pain in the...
As plants go, it's skinny and common at best
And yet I remain the one you detest
…which is chuckle-producing and runs the "as" in place of "ass". Other stanzas, as in The Roadside Evangelist, are trenchant while wry:
I met a man on the side of the roadHe was a raggedy man
I couldn't make out what he was on about
Some conspiracy or master plan
He said "Brother, keep your spare change
For some other poor unfortunate
I don't need your pity now
But I sure could use a cigarette …and there are plenty of turns of phrase, in Jiggity Jig for instance, that a whole lot of good writers, like some I can think of (ahem!), would envy:
I play a couple of tunes and down another beer
But a packed house is empty when my baby isn't hereThen we have the instrumentals, three of 'em, with Letting Go of the Weight of the World trotting out the pair's complexities, incorporating elements of such prog-folkies as Cano, Hometown Band, Conventum, Valdy, and perhaps even Flairck. Much of the material is swing or something very close, and whatever doesn't swing sways in that direction even when bayou lazy. There's a bit of Dan Hicks, the Andrews Sisters, Asleep at the Wheel, and even City Boy, a rock band which penned clever verses very much like Sweet Patootie's. Lots to like here, o'you tavern trawlers and moon-eyed hipsters, lots to like.__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Net Rhythms, UK
David KidmanLike me you will probably remember the magnificent Canadian band Tanglefoot with great fondness, regretting the fact they quit touring and disbanded at the end of last year. Out of the ashes, however, has risen the memorably-named duo My Sweet Patootie, which comprises guitarist Terry Young and fiddle player Sandra Swannell.
Actually, it turns out that this spicy musical partnership was formed back in 2007, after the two had discovered a mutual love of big-band and swinging jazzy country-blues-type music; and, as you might expect, they show immense flair as instrumentalists within those musical idioms, with sensitivity-within-wizardry and highly polished musicianship high on the agenda at all times. Sandra's seriously quicksilver flamboyance totally complements Terry's flashily dextrous fingerpicking; they're simply amazing, in other words!
Their repertoire is exclusively self-penned: the majority of their songs are joint compositions (I'd guess Terry provides the words and Sandra the music, tho'I may be wrong here), with one solo composition apiece and a couple of brilliant instrumentals (the inevitably-titled Sweet Patootie Rag and a sparkling folky-proggy revisit of the title cut from Terry's own solo album).
The duo's songs are almost exclusively in the light 'n'breezy fun/satire vein, and their impact varies from hitting the bullseye or tongue-in-cheek close to the mark to slightly laboured or featherweight-disposable. When they get the balance right, the results are absolutely delicious.
But instrumentally, the duo are forever spot-on: the Hot-Club-style ambience of their playing is both highly persuasive and very attractive, and as if that weren't enough both singers are darned brilliant, for they turn in some really neat close-harmony vocals on Out Of Luck and the stomping closer Damn Bee sounds like the Andrews Sisters meeting up with Asleep At The Wheel. Actually, although MSP's sense of humour is pretty much in tune and generally a strong suit for their raison-d'être, some of the satire is a little too knowingly funny, and among my own favourite tracks are the instrumentals and the "non-funnies" (the spirited Lead Me Now and the genial philosophical Kemble Mountain). And I just love the tasty, extra-special rhythm-section contributions from Dave Young (upright bass) and Bucky Burger (drums) on several of the tracks, while the disc's production, by Canadian blues-roots legend Ken Whiteley, is spot-on.
If the idea of "meticulously crafted music that retains its intended cheeky sophistication" appeals to you, then so will My Sweet Patootie, who according to their website are "more fun than drinking martinis at a tractor pull" - and who am I to disagree?
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ArticlesThe Sun Times, Owen Sound, Ontario Feb 12, 2009
Posted By BILL HENRYMy Sweet Patootie remains upbeat.
Leukemia awareness concert on Feb. 21 that was to be fundraiser for the late Dave Maw will be light and upbeat, in tribute to his life and outlook.
Dave Maw had a joke line he'd throw around to encourage his partner Sandra Swannell's music.
Now, like much of the humour and outlook Swannell shared with Maw, who died in December of leukemia, his line has become a song.
"A lot of the ideas for my songs or even some of the lyrics themselves come from my life with Dave and the humour that we shared, and some are his actual words," Swannell said recently.
"Daddy Needs a New Tractor" is among four new songs the violinist/singer/songwriter will perform withguitarist/singer/songwriter Terry Young when the quirky folk, swing, jazz duo My Sweet Patootie and several guests play The Roxy on Feb. 21. The leukemia awareness concert was to have been a fundraiser for Maw, who "was adamant" the event first planned early last fall should proceed, whatever happened, Swannell said.It's to raise funds for blood cancer research, which will go to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada. The volunteer run organization raises funds for research to cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and myeloma, and to improve the quality of life of patients and their families.
An additional, critically important message during the concert that night at The Roxy will be about the One Match stem cell and marrow network (www.onematch.ca) and the importance of building a national and worldwide registry of prospective bone marrow donors, she said.
Maw's sister Justine and her husband Dave Farrar, both former Shards members with Swannell, will join My Sweet Patootie for the show, along with Don Buchanan on sax and clarinet and acoustic bassist Jack McFadden.
Most important, Swannell said, is to keep the event light and upbeat, in tribute to Maw's life and outlook. "Dave was an extremely positive person. He always said everybody has a sad story, so that kind of cancels out everybody's sad story," Swannell said. "That was him. He had a wonderful, very quirky sense of humour. Humour was an important part of my relationship with Dave. We laughed our butts off every day, even in the hospital, the whole time."
"He made everybody laugh. You know, you have to find humour in whatever life throws at you. That's part of this. What better way to honour him than to have a really fun night with some hot playing and get the message out at the same time about an important cause."
On his birthday last March, the couple learned Maw had acute lymphoblastic leukemia, an aggressive blood cancer. He died on Swannell's birthday, just days before Christmas.
Surviving that type of leukemia requires a bone marrow transplant during a remission stage of the disease. Seventy per cent of people fighting it will not find a bone marrow match within their families.
"Dave never had a match," Swannell said. "It's just such an aggressive disease and the match is critical and the time frame is critical. Having people at the ready is just so vital. It's everything."
During his illness, Swannell set aside much of her music career. Both she and Young are also members of Tanglefoot, an Owen Sound-based folk and roots music quintet that tours North America and England and Scotland with more than 100 shows annually. She was unable to make most of the fall tour, and My Sweet Patootie also cancelled December shows.
Swannell and Young began making violin and guitar music together as an additional, musical alternative outlet to Tanglefoot. They shared an interest in early jazz, swing and other genres which weren't part of Tanglefoot's musical approach. They launched My Sweet Patootie just over a year ago and recorded an album soon after.
Swannell at the time described the music as "kind of like Grey-Bruce" with whacky songs inspired by the local, rural area and it's people. The sound is a mix of blues, swing, early jazz and folk funk with acoustic guitar and violin. "It's uptown swing meets rural grit, kind of thing; city meets country, Green Acres for the Millennium," Young said recently, adding some of the new songs not yet ready for public performance are leaning toward country.
By 2010 the duo hopes to tour with about 60 shows annually. Until then, touring with Tanglefoot will likely leave room only for about 20 My Sweet Patootie shows this year.
The Feb. 21 Roxy benefit concert will include four new Patootie songs, and about seven or eight as a duo. The rest will be with the full band.An earlier community event to raise funds in support of Maw during his illness brought together at the Kemble arena a wide cross section of the region's musical community and arts community. He was a highly-regarded cabinet maker and furniture builder associated with the Owen Sound Artist's Co-op.
"What the arts community and the music community did for Dave and I was extraordinary," Swannell said. It also surprised and shocked the couple, who deeply appreciated the support, she added.
"He really kept a low profile. That's just the kind of guy he was. He wouldn't want a big deal made of him. He was completely floored and shocked and overwhelmed by the Kemble thing. He was super thrilled but it just wasn't anything he would have ever asked for or done for himself."
Only recently has Swannell been back on the road with Tanglefoot, while focusing both on the upcoming Patootie show and plans beyond. With Tanglefoot in its last year of touring -- the annual December Roxy shows will be the band's swan song -- Swannell and Young plan to make My Sweet Patootie their full-time pursuit in 2010.
"We're plugging along and thinking ahead," she said, adding the positive energy and focus for this show is part of moving beyond grief. "I think it does help, for sure . . . it gives me something really positive to focus on."
Article ID# 1432005
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My Sweet Patootie Concert Review"Keeps Me Alive" online forum
Aaron Stewart's Feb 2008Last night we attended another brilliant chapter in the Knox Acoustic Café series. What a fantastic time! My Sweet Patootie is comprised of Sandra Swannell on fiddle, viola and vocals, and Terry Young on guitar, mandolin and vocals. Now, in case you're thinking you've maybe heard those names before, you likely have - they're also members of a band called Tanglefoot. Yeah, exactly. Imagine our glee!
The sold-out room was packed to capacity, a brilliant way to begin this year's string of shows.
I am understating when I say that this duo is extremely talented. Swannell sings clearly and beautifully in a voice that is ideal for these songs. Her instrumental work reminds me of seeing Diona Davies play with Carolyn Mark last November – perfectly supportive when the song requires it, and also able to step forward and lay down a solo that'll make you drool. What a treat. And Young was all over the fretboard too, taking every guitar player in the room to school with runs, fills and licks that boggled the mind. He sings and plays with an exuberance and a smile on his face that is truly refreshing to see. These were musicians embracing the fun that makes music one of the greatest forces in our lives, even interspersing Flight Of The Bumblebee or Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy into their own tunes, and playing Willie Nelson's Crazy on a 1919 Gibson mandolin.
Between songs the banter was light and fun, mostly tour and slice of life perspective stories that stem from that way of living which refuses to be dragged down by anything.
But what impressed me most was just watching the two of them happily lose themselves in the music, such as on the instrumental Sweet Patootie Rag, or letting the audience in on their many lyrical gags with a sly wink and a grin that lets you feel an equal part of the whole thing. Some people play their whole lives trying and hoping to have a rapport like that, and these two did it effortlessly (although no one was fooled for one second into believing that anything but a ton of hard work has gone into this music). And what do they sound like? Think of the guitar tracks on the Swing Kids soundtrack, mixed with the Squirrel Nut Zippers, and filter it through genuine acoustic folk. Add thoughtful and humourous lyrics, et voilà. In other words, fantastic!
It was announced from the stage last night that My Sweet Patootie is currently recording an album, apparently due to be released in the spring. I, for one, cannot wait. Keep your eyes peeled! And if you get a chance to see this duo perform, climb over every obstacle in your way and be there. This is a show you don't want to miss.
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Dirty Linen
Chris Kocher, Jul-Aug
2009After more than two decades, Canadian folk quintet Tanglefoot will quit touring at the end of 2009. Two band members though, will continue on as a new duo, cheekily titled My Sweet Patootie. Sandra Swannell (fiddle)and Terry Young (guitar) swap lead vocals and blend close harmonies on these 14 original folk and swing tunes, produced by Canadian roots legend Ken Whiteley. Tales about a guy seeking a glass eye ("The Marble"), a yodeling mutt ("That Wailing Hound"), or a forceful kiss-off ("You're Not the One") showcase the duo's sly humor, while "The Roadside Evangelist") finds sympathy for a homeless man. Kids discover a world of imagination in "The Box" only to grow up to inhabit office cubicles, and you'll never cut your lawn the same way again after the first-"person" story of woe from "The Dandiest of Dandelions."
Good stuff? You bet your...well, you know.
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My Sweet Patootie to debut at EPAC - February 18, 2010
Endicott Performing Arts Centre
By Chris KocherWhat do a guy with a glass eye, a yodeling hound and a homeless roadside evangelist have in common?
They're just a few of the off-beat residents of "Nowheresville," the amusing first album from the Canadian duo cheekily called My Sweet Patootie. The name may be unfamiliar to local music fans, but the faces (and talent) aren't: Fiddler Sandra Swannell and guitarist Terry Young were members of folk stalwarts Tanglefoot, who made annual visits to the Endicott Performing Arts Center over the past decade.
When Tanglefoot folded at the end of 2009, Young and Swannell decided to make their side project a full-time gig, and Saturday will see the new band's debut at EPAC.
Anyone expecting a Tanglefoot redux should think again, though. Although the two groups share a strong sense of humor, their musical styles are quite different. While Tanglefoot specialized in bombastic tales of Canadian history, My Sweet Patootie has more of a rural-meets-urban vibe that draws inspiration from swing music and Swannell's
skewed storytelling."There's a bit of rural grit in the things we do, some country colloquialisms that are smashed against uptown swing or city ideas," Young said in an interview with the duo earlier this month. "We like to think of our music as 'Green Acres'for the new millennium!'
For all of their joking around, Swannell and Young bring decades of hard-earned skill to the Patootie party. Swannell said that as a 4-year-old, "I'd go to kindergarten in the morning, and then in the afternoon I'd come home, put my pajamas on and practice violin all afternoon. That still sounds like my perfect day - except for the school part!"
For years, she straddled two worlds: classical and roots/rock music. While she worked as principal violist in the Georgian Bay Symphony Orchestra in Owen Sound, Ontario, she also played fiddle with a variety of bands and was a session player. She joined Tanglefoot in early 2006 as its first female musician, and that's where she found a kindred
spirit in Young, who shared her love of big bands and swinging country blues."I was one of those snotty-nosed kids who liked to sing every day walking home from school, jumping in puddles and stuff," Young said.
In high school, he joined rock bands but also took some classical training and listened to finger-style guitarists such as Bruce Coburn, John Prine and Chet Atkins. After earning a degree in classical voice from the University of Western Ontario, he worked full-time as a teacher and also played the "pub ghetto" scene around the Toronto area. He was 40 years old when Tanglefoot asked him to join and tour with them, so he made the leap of faith and
went out on the road with them for 11 years.My Sweet Patootie - a term of endearment from the 1920s and '30s - sprang from a cute little tune called "Sweet Patootie Rag," which Young asked Swannell to help finish. That opened the door to a wider collaboration.
She and Young alternate lead vocals throughout the 14 tracks on "Nowheresville" and the themes reflect
the duo's back-to-the-land philosophy. On the sly "Gucci Gumboots," Swannell offers a plea to a city-
based lover to join her for a simpler life, and "Kemble Mountain" encourages climbing a notable Ontario landmark for a new perspective on life.Some songs are just laugh-out-loud funny: A one-eyed guy named Guy buys a new glass eye in a toe-tapper called "The Marble," Swannell yodels like an unhappy pooch in "That Wailing Hound" and Young lends drama to the tale of woe from "The Dandiest of Dandelions." But it's "The Roadside Evangelist" - based on a homeless person that Swannell knew - that pulls from a more contemplative place.
Young and Swannell have laid the groundwork for a productive first year as My Sweet Patootie, lining up
shows throughout Canada and the United States; they'll even do a short tour of England. April is blocked out for recording the next album, with former Tanglefoot bandmate Bryan Weirmier as producer."We're chipping away, and we have our own little plan and things we'd like to accomplish," Swannell
said. "You gotta have a plan - otherwise you just sit around in your pajamas all day. Trust me, I know!""Yeah," Young added with a laugh, "me too!"
