Artist: Sweet Undertow
Hometown: Alphabet City, New York, New York
Latest Album: Days Without Names (releasing July 17, 2026)
Personal Nicknames (or rejected band names): Fast Eddy; Slow and Steady Eddy
What other art forms – literature, film, dance, painting, etc. – inform your music?
I read a lot – like a lot a lot. Language is such a strange thing: these agreed-upon movements of our mouths and these little scribbled symbols allow us to build civilizations. New York and Paris are built out of words way more than they are brick and steel.
And make no mistake, speech and the written word are the same thing as singing. When you order coffee or curse the guy who cut you off – you are singing. There’s melody and rhythm and all that in speech. So listening to some author build castles inside your head. It’s the same thing as song. Listen to Marx here: “You have nothing to lose but your chains.” Put it on a loop in your head, you’ll start to groove to the rhythm. The 4-on-the-floor beat marches like a dialectic. Or take Christ, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That’s music – you can imagine Kurt or Aretha or anyone else singing that line.
In fiction especially, narrative and voice and imagery and sound – it’s all there. You get to dig around inside of these lunatic genius minds all from the comfort of your own home for like 10 bucks a throw. And they don’t even really charge more for longer books – you can’t say no to that kind of bargain these days.
Read these and tell me I’m wrong:
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
2666
Infinite Jest
Blood Meridien
Never Let Me Go
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
It;s tricky. The word “artist” suffers a great deal of abuse from global culture writ large and the music industry in particular – from Subway’s sandwich artists to most of the “artists” you hear on the radio. But for artists, you’re born an artist and it’s a matter of how quickly you can find your medium. It’s long been said that the most dangerous thing in the world is an artist without a medium, and for me it’s hard to say when I found mine. I sang in a punk band in high school, then stole a guitar at 19 and taught myself to play from Muddy Waters records. And I’d play gigs from time to time, but it just never occurred to me to be a musician.
This is the important thing – it never occurred to me to want to be anything. I didn’t think about things in those terms. The best way I can describe my thinking at the time is this: Every year was so totally different than the year before that even the thought of making a long-term plan sounded laughable. Hubris in the face of the capricious gods of time. But I never even really had the thought. Being anything just didn’t occur to me.
So I didn’t have money or stuff or a home, but I traveled the world. Lived in half a dozen countries. There was love, adventure, terror, sickness, laughter, lonesomeness. Damn near got eaten by alligators and, later, a leopard. I worked as a firefighter, a garbageman, a teacher, a student, an organizer, a newspaper reporter, a salesman, and a security guard. Mainly a rambler, Odysseus-ing around, but not trying to get anywhere exactly.
But I guess if there was a moment when I realized I was a musician it was in Singapore. I was playing tunes at this bar in Geylang and this pilot named Spinks came up to me after, grabbed my shoulders, and said, “Brother, you’re a musician.” And like a punch to the chest I realized he was right.
Genre is dead (long live genre!), but how would you describe the genres and styles your music inhabits?
Genre is 99% marketing speak – so it isn’t dead in as much as it has essentially nothing to do with music at all.
That said, Sweet Undertow makes country disco, outerspace Americana, hardcore folk, and babymakin’ rock ‘n’ roll.
What is a genre, album, artist, musician, or song that you adore that would surprise people?
People’s sense of surprise is their own business, so far be it from me to try and influence that, but here’s some fun facts:
When I get the blues (surprise surprise, I get the blues!) I put on the Rebirth Brass Band, Dr. John, the Meters, Curtis Mayfield, and Parliament. And while it doesn’t cure the blues, per se, it is definitely harder to be sad when you’re dancing.
And for the lightning round:
1) Marvin Gaye is maybe the greatest musical genius of the 20th century.
2) Django Reinhardt is the greatest guitarist player who ever lived.
3) Ella Fitzgerald is some kind of goddess who briefly took mortal form.
4) Standards by Tortoise – chef’s kiss.
5) My favorite band for a goodly while was Los Crudos.
If you didn’t work in music, what would you do instead?
If I couldn’t play music I’d jump off a goddamn bridge – it’s the only thing I like.
Photo Credit: Jessica Lee
