SOUND CHECK: The Swear gets the word out
ELIZABETH ELKINS HAS been a fixture on Atlanta's music scene for years now, first with her indie rock band Alastor and more recently with the somewhat punkier act the Swear. Following the 2006 release of its debut EP "Every Trick's a Good One," the Swear will self-release its first full-length album, "Hotel Rooms and Heart Attacks," a rollicking set of angsty hard rock, on Aug. 26. The CD release show isn't until Sept. 12, but the band plays a hometown gig for the first time in several months July 10. Elkins took a moment to talk about the band's history and her hopes for the new album.
How will this show differ from the CD release show?
At the CD release we're actually going to have a keyboard player join us and we're probably going to play the entire CD. We're going to do some things to make it a very different, party-type experience. We haven't played in Atlanta since March and we had the opportunity to play [tonight] with one of my good friends who I do some co-writing with, Brad Cox. For us it's just that we haven't played in Atlanta in a long time and we wanted to get a good hometown show in before we go to New York the following week.
You're doing Camp Jam at North Springs High School on July 24. What exactly is that?
It's a summer camp for kids that want to be in rock bands. They invite different musicians —- like they've had folks that play with the Allman Brothers, and they had Liberty DeVitto, Billy Joel's drummer, come once. You basically do a performance, then you do a Q&A and seminar with all these kids. It's really, really fun to do and we've done it the last two summers.
Which shows would you say have been your most memorable?
I enjoyed opening for Concrete Blonde just because I grew up listening to Concrete Blonde, so that was awesome to do. We got to play with the Living End and that was a really fun show, too. We actually got to play with Paramore at the Warped Tour. We shared a stage and played back-to-back with each other, which was cool because it was way before they got so huge and they all had their parents on tour with them.
The Swear seems to have always been on the verge of something big. Do you see the new album as being the band's breakthrough?
I hope so. The one thing that has been both good and bad about this band is so far we've done all this completely by ourselves. We haven't had management or attorneys or labels or anything involved, and this CD is our first full-length and was an absolute labor of love. ... We've been fortunate to have a lot of good things happen as far as winning songwriting contests, film and TV placements and getting to play some incredible shows. I'm hoping that we have the resume and we can start putting a team together that can get us to whatever that proverbial next stage in our careers is.
> THE 411: The Swear with Brad Cox. $7. 9 p.m. July 10. Andrews Upstairs, 56 E. Andrews Drive, Buckhead. 404-869-1132, www.theswear.com, www.eastandrews.com.
