Justin Swanson

Justin Swanson was born in Fresno California where his dad introduced him to The Beatles and where his great grand mother showed him Tom T. Hall and Johnny Cash. He later grew up in Salt Lake City where his brother got him into hardcore and punk rock."The very first punk cassette I ever owned I bought when I was ten years old. It was the self titled Minor Threat album with the blue cover." As a pissed off teen Justin fronted the punk band The Grubs who played constantly in and around Salt Lake City throughout the mid to late nineties. Read more on Last.fm …read full bio

Justin Swanson was born in Fresno California where his dad introduced him to The Beatles and where his great grand mother showed him Tom T. Hall and Johnny Cash. He later grew up in Salt Lake City where his brother got him into hardcore and punk rock."The very first punk cassette I ever owned I bought when I was ten years old. It was the self titled Minor Threat album with the blue cover." As a pissed off teen Justin fronted the punk band The Grubs who played constantly in and around Salt Lake City throughout the mid to late nineties. Justin wanted out from behind the Zion Curtain, so at 18, he graduated high school early and escaped to Portland Oregon where he interned at a recording studio while writing songs of his own on the side. Portland's vibrant music community encouraged him to keep writing but he grew tired of frontman duties, thus, The Taxi Cab Trio was born. "We were an instrumental group, so I could finally focus just on my guitar playing. Equal parts Surf, Fugazi, and Sabbath. It was a blast!" The instro group was short lived and Justin moved to Seattle to pursue other things and get his shit together. Years passed and Justin currently resides back in Portland where in the Spring of 2009, after a 4 year hiatus from performing and recording his music, he self released his first full fledged solo album entitled, "Pull Over I'm Going to Start a Riot". The album was written during a two month writing binge in the later part of 2008. Justin recorded the songs in his basement but ultimately wasn't quite satisfied with how they were turning out. So, Justin sought out his old friend and band mate from the Taxi Cab days, engineer Rick Duncan, who is also the owner of Radsoul Studios in southeast Portland. Justin was relieved to be working with an engineer but insisted they do the entire album on his Tascam 4 track cassette recorder and exclusively use tube microphones for the entire recording process. Credited players on the album are as follows: Rick Duncan on bass, Darryl Swan on drums and Mathew Koski on organ and percussion. "The recording of that album was done super fast and was very organic. I think we were all pretty amazed once it was done. It just sort of happened." Justin hand made, numbered, and wax sealed each and every package of the 113 original copies of the CD album release. Justin set out on a brief tour to support the record and is now performing regularly around the Pacific Northwest. He is currently working on new material for his second album that is scheduled to be released in 2010. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.

…shrink me down again