Singer and multi-instrumentalist Swang has been touring with the Family Stone since 2017, handling lead vocals and keyboards. He has also performed with Ne-Yo, Shuggie Otis, and the Roots, among others, and maintains a busy schedule as producer, working with such artists as Gene Taylor and Jason Gill. We sat down with Swang recently to learn more about his history in the music business, see what he’s been up to during the extended break from the road in 2020, get his advice for musicians who are trying to work their way into the industry, and much more!

Can you begin by telling us a little bit about yourself?

I’m from New York City and I’ve been working in the New York City music community for the better part of 22 years. I’ve always been interested in music-making, in creativity, just from hearing music around the house as a kid and being exposed to it by my parents. I guess it was just something I was always interested in. Around eight or nine years old I started to play a little bit, sort of noodling, tapping on pots and pans. There was a piano in the house, so I’d play with that, as well. Eventually I started to take it a little more seriously and got ahold of some instruments. I started to learn the drums, then became very serious about the keyboard and piano, learning bass guitar and guitar along the way. Later, I started going to jam sessions and things, trying to get noticed, and eventually landed a gig as Ne-Yo’s keyboard player, and was part of the band on his first record. We did the Letterman show and a few other concerts across the country. And thus began life on the road for me. That was around 2006, I guess.

What inspired you to become a musician? 

My parents, mostly, by exposing me to music. My mother had the radio on all day, every day when she was home. So I heard those sounds, and my father was a DJ when I was younger. There was just music in the house all the time. And in the time period when I was growing up – the early to mid ’80s – I was seeing people like Prince and Michael Jackson, so that kind of thing was piquing my interest. One day I was watching Prince on TV and I said something about him being a really good guitar player, and my dad said, “That guy plays every instrument.” I was like, “What? You can do that?” So that was a pretty big revelation to me, and I just figured, OK, maybe I’ll never be as good as that, but I’m going to give it a shot. I’m still doing that – I’m still saying the same thing.

How did you get started with the Family Stone?

I had known Gregg Errico, who was the original drummer for Sly and the Family Stone, for a long time. He used to come to New York and find his way into our circles, the aforementioned music community in the Greenwich Village area. We did some late-night jam sessions for a while. Then Jerry Martini, who’s the Family Stone’s bandleader now, showed up at a few of them. And at the second or third one we did with Jerry, he said, “Can I call you next week?” I said, “Well, yeah, you’re Jerry Martini, you can call me tonight when you get home if you like.” So he called me maybe one or two weeks after that jam, which we’d done in celebration of Sly’s birthday at B.B. King’s on 42^nd Street, and he said, “We’re looking to shift the band a little bit, and if I could make it happen would you want to do it?” I think I waited for him to finish asking the question before I said yes. I’m pretty sure I did. That was in the early part of 2017, I guess, and my first show was August of 2017 in Ashville, North Carolina – still one of my favorite shows.

Favorite because it was your first show with the band?

Yeah, I was just excited to get out there and play this great music that I had heard all of my life. My father and my mother were both Sly and the Family Stone fanatics – my extended family, as well. They all grew up during the ’60s and early ’70s. So, I’d heard it all of my life and it was a big inspiration. And it still is.

What instrument were you playing with them at that point?

I was playing organ parts, mostly. I was fronting. Taking Sly’s parts – organ and lead vocals.

In addition to singing, you also play drums, piano, guitar, and bass guitar. Which is your favorite instrument to play?

I like to write arrangements for things, and the piano is well-suited for that. So I suppose the piano’s a favorite. I do like playing the drums. I wish I was a little more developed in terms of technique. I enjoy doing it, enjoy learning more about it, and I practice a lot. Bass guitar is also a favorite, just because it’s so much fun to play.

You also are an esteemed music producer. Have you been working on anything new lately?

Always. There’s a project that we just finished for an artist called Gene Taylor. His EP hopefully will be out either late this year or early 2021. I produced the whole thing. I think there are five songs on it. I wrote a lot of the arrangements and played a good number of the instruments as well. But he’s a fantastic songwriter and singer.

So, I just finished that, and there’s a single coming out for an artist I’ve worked with a lot on his last eight or nine releases. His name is Jason Gill. He’s a multiple award-winner, great songwriter, good friend, very creative, with a fantastic first tenor, Michael Jackson-style voice. His latest single “Good Love” will be out in a few weeks.

I love producing. It’s a real big passion of mine. The studio in Brooklyn where I work, Mighty Toad Studio, we’re all analog, recording to two-inch tape – old school – great collection of vintage gear, including the AT4040. I like recording that way because I feel I get the best sound, for one thing, and I get the best out of my collaborators. When you’re going to tape you got to nail it, and actually be really good and put the work in.

Whether on stage or in the studio, do you have any go-to audio equipment?

Well, I’ve been a Nord guy for many years as far as live keyboards go. Because if you’re on the road and you have a finite amount of time to get things set, sound check-wise, it helps to have a pretty streamlined setup. In the music of Sly and the Family Stone there’s not a lot of synthesizer going on, it’s sort of bread-and-butter sounds like pianos, and B3 organs, Leslies, Wurlitzers, and Pianets – things like that. So Nord is great for that, in terms of quick setup, good sounds, and easy-to-understand flow from the interface. I’ve been using that for a long time. It worked for me with Shuggie Otis, as well, who I was with for a number of years.

But, honestly, the Audio-Technica System 10 PRO ATW-1322 has really changed our live sound a lot – for the better. Being on the road, you’re kind of at the mercy of a venue’s audio. If you show up without live gear of your own it can be like a box of chocolates, not always in a good way. So it’s great to have your own plug-and-play sound that doesn’t require a lot of time to dial in. I don’t know the tech A-T employs to get that done, but I would say it’s 85% there as soon as we plug it in and turn it on, which is not always the way it is with other gear. It’s really changed the way we work. I don’t like to spend a lot of time in sound checks. I like to focus on the main event and getting myself ready for it. Especially being a front person, you have to conserve your energy. Sound checks can go on for a very long time, especially if you can’t get the sound right. So for the vocals to be right there is a pretty big deal for me, because everything else is so much easier to do when you’re not forced to repeat “check one two, check one two,” sometimes for 45 minutes. The team instantly relaxed when we got ahold of those systems. They’re easy to transport, which is also important. And the audio crews love us for bringing things like that because it saves them a lot of dialing in.

That’s it for me for go-to gear, really. I'm pretty simple and streamlined and just like to get on with playing. In the studio, I have a lot of my own preferences, and a lot of them are just so old, like V72 preamps.We just got an RCA 77 mic in there and plugged it in and were like, “Ah, this is that mic!” My favorite compressor is the LA-3A.

We know 2020 has been a stressful year for so many musicians. What have you been doing to keep busy and creative?

Practicing a lot. And I’m slowly clearing away a lot of the production stuff that had been left on the desk for longer than I had wanted. So when we’re able to resume – I think the studio’s going to reopen pretty soon if it’s not reopened already – we can start working on some new things and start filling the desk up again.

So was the Gene Taylor project done pre-COVID?

For the most part, yeah. As COVID started to happen we had just finished overdubs. So, luckily enough, we had some things finished already, including mixed and mastered. But the last three or so songs got wrapped up just as COVID was starting to shut things down.

I’ve just been trying to practice a lot, shed a lot of things – because being on the road you don’t get a lot of time to do that – finish up some old projects, and stay as stimulated as much as possible. I’m also listening to a lot of new stuff that I had not heard before. For example, I hadn’t dived into Hiatus Kaiyote. They’ve been around for a while, but I hadn’t done much listening to their stuff. So I’ve started to go back and find their catalog because it kept popping up on the shuffle on my phone. Finally, I was like, I really need to check this out. Leon Bridges, as well.

Which instruments have you been practicing?

I’ve been trying to practice guitar and drums a lot, because I thought I was doing pretty well with bass guitar and keyboard since I play them more often. So I hit up some drummer friends of mine to send over a few things I could sight-read, basic things. Joe Goretti sent me over some basic right foot things that I wanted to work on – gotta get that sixteenth note pickup thing going!

As someone who fronts a world-famous band, what advice would you give to aspiring musicians?

The industry I knew growing up is nearly a completely different industry now. Still, I’d tell an aspiring musician to learn as much about the business as you can. I can’t really speak to what that might entail because I know more about the way the industry used to be. But there are always ways to make music and generate an income for yourself. Will you get rich? If you’re like most of us, probably that will never happen. But you can sustain a working person’s living, provided you know which pitfalls to watch out for. That sounds like a dodgy answer, but the truth is it’s going to be different for everybody, depending on what area of the industry you want to get into. I’ve always said, if you’re a musician and you want to get involved with being on the road, for example, with something like the Family Stone, start networking and playing out a lot. Of course, that’s not possible right now, and we don’t know what the live music industry is going to look like on the other side of this yet.

Diversity is a big component. I’ve found that has worked for me. I was advised against learning a lot of instruments because you won’t learn any one of them very well and it pays to specialize. That hasn’t been the situation for me – I found ways around that. So if you feel like something that you’re doing is the right way to go, and you feel that you can find a way to turn that into a career or at least some kind of return on investment, go for it. In the new industry, there are probably ways that I couldn’t even conceive of to do that. I was lucky that I got in at the tail end just before the industry model was sort of rebuilt from the ground up. I was already on the road by the time that happened. I guess the inspirational message here is what you do has a lot of value. Try to be respectful of that and command respect for it.

Thanks, Swang! How can people stay in touch with you and the Family Stone?

You can check out my website (www.rspexperiment.com) and the site for the Family Stone (www.thefamilystoneband.com).