Brown Bird

Brown Bird began as David Lamb's solo outlet, merging American folk roots with touches of traditional Balkan sounds and vintage psychedelia. Throughout the latter 2000s the project grew first into a trio, then a quintet, before settling as the duo of Lamb and his wife MorganEve Swain, a fiddler and multi-instrumentalist. Based in Rhode Island, the pair kept releasing music and exploring new directions into the next decade, issuing Salt for Salt in 2011 and the philosophically minded Fits of Reason in 2013 until Lamb was diagnosed with leukemia. After his death in 2014, Swain finished the band's last album, Axis Mundi, which appeared posthumously.

In 2003, after a short stay in Seattle, Lamb relocated to Portland, Maine, and began shaping a set of folk songs that echoed the austere, raw style of Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Iron & Wine. His friends Jerusha Robinson and Jeremy Robinson soon joined to flesh out the arrangements, and the trio independently issued their debut album, Tautolougy, in 2006. Immersed in the rising national indie-folk community, the group self-released Such Unrest the next year and then signed with Portland, Maine's Peapod Recordings. Their first release on the label, The Bottom of the Sea, arrived in 2008, after which Lamb toured the U.S. solo to promote it. While traveling he met Rhode Island multi-instrumentalist MorganEve Swain, his future wife and creative partner, along with steel guitarist and dobro player Mike Samos, both of whom were added to the lineup.

Brown Bird's fourth studio album, The Devil Dancing, came out in November 2009 and marked the first appearance of Swain's contributions. Now sharing a home in Providence, Rhode Island, the band operated essentially as a duo on Salt for Salt and Fits of Reason. During touring for the latter release, Lamb, whose health had declined for months, received his leukemia diagnosis. He underwent a successful bone marrow transplant and spent the following year at home with Swain developing fresh material during recovery. By the next spring an aggressive relapse had set in, and Lamb died from the illness on April 5, 2014. Assisted by her brother Spencer Swain and engineer Seth Manchester, Swain completed the final recordings. Axis Mundi was released in April 2015, one year after Lamb's passing. Swain later launched her own project, the Huntress and Holder of Hands.