Prolific songwriter and founder of The Black Swans, Jerry David DeCicca, returns to Murray, Kentucky, for an intimate performance at Wits' End Records on Sunday, June 15. Sounds Good host Tracy Ross spoke to DeCicca ahead of the performance about his latest record, Cardiac Country, and the harrowing health scare that helped inform the album.
Since starting his music career in the latter half of the 1990s, DeCicca has recorded a wide variety of albums both under his name and with the band he founded in 2004, The Black Swans. His latest record, Cardiac Country, was released on Sophomore Lounge, a small record label, with largely independent promotion and press. Notably, the album features lap steel player B.J. Cole, who performed on commercially successful hits like Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" and records by Roger Daltrey, T. Rex, David Gilmour, Robert Plant, Brian Eno, and Robbie Williams, among many others.
The album is also significant to DeCicca's personal life, as it captures his health leading up to open heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. DeCicca's traumatic health scare led to the title of the album, Cardiac Country, which he told Ross helped "glue [his] own life to the songs and music." Even though he wrote many of the songs on the album prior to his diagnosis, the 10-song tracklist seems to uncannily foreshadow his doctors identifying a leaky aortic valve. "I tend to be a very non-woo-woo kind of guy," he explained. "But when I was listening back to the record and knowing what I'd been through, it was pretty undeniable that there are these lines that never showed up in the songs I wrote [in] the 20 years before."
"One of the things I love about records is they're documents of who you are at that point in time," he continued. "Though I was afraid that maybe I wasn't going to make the surgery, even though my odds were pretty good, I also wanted to record it beforehand just because I wanted to document who I was and what I sounded like."
DeCicca will be returning to Murray for the fourth time this Sunday, June 15, at 6 pm for an intimate, blues-centric performance at Wits' End Records at 514 Main Street. He will be performing songs from his latest record as well as a collection of songs from previous albums. DeCicca's performance will be supported by local songwriter and musician Matthew Rowan. This event is open to all ages, and admission is a suggested donation.
For more information on DeCicca and his music, visit his website.
