Black Swans Go Through Change! on New Album, Tour
Band members find feathers in awkward places, experience urges to fly in V formation

Columbus, Ohio's the Black Swans have all sorts of goings on going on across a variety of media and U.S. cities this fall, including the release of an album, a bunch of a shows, an art exhibition, and a lecture on Bob Dylan by singer, songwriter, and guitarist Jerry DeCicca.

Let's start with the record, Change! (mere coincidence that the title combines two Dismemberment Plan LPs?), which comes out on La Société Expéditionnaire on November 6. It's the band's sophomore full-length and the follow-up to last year's Sex Brain EP. The CD's cover artwork is a painting called Untitled by Debbie Porchetti, a member of Arc North Workshop, which is a sheltered art workshop under the umbrella of Columbus' Franklin County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. The limited edition vinyl version of Change! comes in a run of 500, and each LP features a different cover with art by Arc North members. You can see video of Arc North artists at work on the project here.

The art exhibition is a showing of these covers at Columbus' Yeah, Me Too Coffee Shop, and the Black Swans will play its opening on November 2. But the art opening is only one of a couple handfuls of shows the Swans will play this fall, most of which are in either Columbus or Brooklyn, though the next one is in Nashville on September 29.

Still with us? Good, because maybe the most awesome of the flock of Black Swans-related news is Jerry DeCicca's guest lecture on Bob Dylan at the Ohio State University's Denny Hall on November 14. Unfortunately it's not open to the public, but OSU students should keep an eye out for DeCicca's From Infidels to Time Out of Mind: The Unhinged and Rhymed Mind of Bob Dylan in the 80s and 90s.

Finally, DeCicca recently co-produced recordings by former Monument Records artist Larry Jon Wilson, the latter's first new stuff in 30 years. That music will see a UK release early next year via 1965 Records/Sony.

Change!:

01 New Face
02 Hope Island
03 Coats
04 Only Be With You
05 Shake
06 Purple Heart
07 Fruitless Ways
08 Blue Moon #9
09 3 Broken Words
10 Slide on Down
11 Change
12 3 Chord Song

Dates:

09-29 Nashville, TN - Grimey's Fall Par-tay!
10-16 Washington, DC - Red and Black Bar
10-17 Brooklyn, NY - Union Pool (La Société Expéditionnaire CMJ showcase) *
10-18 Brooklyn, NY - Sound Fix (in-store) *
10-19 Brooklyn, NY - Pete's Candy Store
10-20 Scranton, PA - Test Pattern *
10-25 Chicago, IL - Schubas
10-26 Columbus, OH - Surly Girl (CD release party)
11-02 Columbus, OH - Yeah, Me Too Coffee Shop (LP jacket art opening)
11-16 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Chapel *
11-18 Brooklyn, NY - Cake Shop

* with Lewis & Clarke