Myriam Swanson: In her own way, like the best

Her wide smile dazzles the Bar staff when she makes an appearance to down a beer or, perhaps, if something tasty to eat comes along, "a little wine." Georgie Fame's Gimme That Wine plays on the radio and Myriam Swanson, a Barcelona singer, looks happy.

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Lately, she's been involved in various messes: "Preparing the third album with Flamingo Tours, Wild Beasts From the South, a very important album for me, working on Magnolia's next album, also the third, which shows very beatnik tendencies, working on Rhythm Treasures' second LP and making a pilot for a podcast." Three albums at the helm of three different projects. Quite something.

--All bad ideas!-- she jokes.

--And you can handle it all now?

She doesn't need to answer. Of course she can. And she does it without ever losing that joy of hers that spreads among the locals in a matter of seconds.

"I am a Rock & Roll, Punk, and Rhythm & Blues singer --she explains, as Mose Allison's I Love The Life I Live plays and she reminisces--. "My brother was a rocker but he liked motorcycles and southern rock, which, to me, seemed very old-fashioned. And then, when he got into harder rock, it seemed torturous. The Blues was the first thing I heard and sang." In her high school days, she discovered Punk Rock, which was the perfect soundtrack for high school days. "At that time, I started doing gigs, singing, and that's when I discovered Rhythm & Blues and the musical legacy of New Orleans." And everything took shape in the mind of that girl who, upon those primordial sonic lexicons, would cement an unbreakable love for icons like Buddy Holly, Charlie Rich, or Elvis Presley.

A syncopated life

"I like jazz –she affirms, with a hint of euphoria, as her coffee-colored eyes dance among the portions offered at the bar—and I also like to read and write, and I like music, arranging and covering songs, composing them. And I like to do all this, all hours of the day. Living inside music like someone living in a cave from whose interior they keep pulling things out. I have found myself in a world of my own, searching for secret music, finding things and meeting people who, like me, listen to music for pleasure."

For some time now, Myriam Swanson's name has been heard a lot, and very well, in different frameworks of Barcelona's musical cartography and beyond: from Campari Milano to Apolo, passing through national and European festivals of all kinds. Whether it's due to her frantic activity on stage, leading many diverse projects that connect, in an invisible sonic join-the-dots, Dinah Washington with the Buzzcocks, passing through Lula Reed or Wanda Jackson; or due to her numerous recordings that include albums and even notable soundtracks for books, like Andreu Martín's "Blues de la semana más negra," set to music by her and another tireless figure of the county's sound systems, Dani Nel·lo.

I did it my Way.

Sinatra sang it, remember? "I did it my way," he said.

"I am proud to have always done what I wanted without servility or paying attention to 'what is best,' but rather to what is truest for me. I am proud of the albums I have made with my effort and my work."

--Heh! As if she shouldn't be.

In describing the moments that have left the most mark in her passage through this patina of time called life, the first that comes to her mind is "hearing my voice on a sound system. I was very young and I remember getting very scared, crying a lot, and then, paradoxically, wanting that all the time. A whole metaphor for artistic life," she laughs.

Then, more episodes that have been trapped in the cobwebs with which memory does not allow some of our memories to escape through the drain of oblivion: "My father's face when he listened to me at concerts, I will never forget that because I always look for that face. The first time I heard Etta James and wanted to sing well, sing better, be better. The first concert I went to with that strange feeling that I didn't like the music, but I wanted to be on stage. My first gig at 14, at the Gràcia festivals, with a Blues band, the applause and the excitement. My first showcase, where I understood that you don't please everyone, far from it," and an etcetera of great before and afters.

Although, perhaps, the most important breaking point, the one that costs so many artists so much effort, was when she took The Big Step: "Being a waitress to survive, being everything but a musician for fear of messing up, until the moment when, for the first time, you don't give a damn about succeeding or not having money, when you decide to be a musician despite everything."

Fortunately, Myriam Swanson had the guts –backed, of course, by unquestionable talent– and today we have her here, at the Bar, about to continue giving us, recorded or live, much more music with which to escape, even if momentarily, from the inane noise of this daily life that lacks rhythm, beat, and all grace.

--Thank you very much for all that music!--, she has earned a thank you and, as a bonus, another beer.

And she smiles, satisfied, with all her teeth. And winks complicitly.