Sweet Undertow

On his debut album, Skeletone Machine, blues guitarist and singer Eddy Undertow brings a unique San Francisco perspective to the blues. With the help of his band, Sweet Undertow, he flavors the tunes with hints of rock, metal, psychedelia and country music.

“I grew up with the blues, jazz and the sound of the ’60s on the stereo,” Undertow said. “Then my brother’s Metallica tapes had me jumping up and down on the couch. Next it was Nirvana, grunge, Johnny Cash and Fela Kuti. When I’m arranging a tune, that all gets in there. I never meant to make a pure blues record, but I don’t wanna jinx the music by talking about it too much.”

The music on Skeletone Machine speaks for itself. There’s a hint of country in Jim Semitekol’s slide guitar fills on “Kingdom Come With Me,” an invitation to dance the blues away. Chicago meets San Francisco on “Rain Catch Flame,” with guitars suggesting Muddy Waters meeting Jerry Garcia. Undertow belts out the lyric with an insistent growl. “Stained Glass Eyes (Bye Bye Baby)” is an R&B ballad, with a hint of gospel in the backing vocals. Undertow sings a eulogy to a fading relationship, equating the death of the relationship to his own demise, dropping a quote from Dylan Thomas into the third verse.

Although he grew up in Chicago, Undertow said he always felt like his heart belonged in San Francisco. “My dad grew up in San Francisco in the ’50s and ’60s, when all that great psychedelic music stuff was happening,” Undertow said. “He moved to Chicago when Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf were still playing gigs. When I came around, he was always playing records. That was the first time I heard music. I don’t remember not hearing the blues.

“I was singing in a punk band in high school—fuck the world, fuck your parents, the standard fare. Eventually, I quit and got an electric guitar with no amp. I’d put on a blues record and try to play along. I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d listen to the music and try to find a note on the guitar that sounded good with it. Then I’d find another note, and another. They say a good song is made up of three chords and the truth. For me, it was three notes and the truth, but I kept at it and it snowballed.”

After leaving home, Undertow traveled the world, guitar in hand, busking on street corners, taking odd jobs. He meandered through North America, Europe and Asia.

“I played the blues, but never lived anywhere. When I was in Vietnam, I started playing in The Apollo Band, a bunch of Vietnamese dudes playing rock and roll in Ho Chi Minh City. I wandered around, singing on the streets and found a club. I walked up five flights to an empty hall with a stage and two dudes sitting at a table, with a bunch of empty bottles. We started talking music. They asked if I could play, and that became my first band.

“After a while, I wound up in San Francisco and kept playing in bands. When I needed to find a quiet corner to practice, I went to North Beach and sat at the top of the stairs on Romolo Place. At night, I went to Melt and played blues, jazz and Hank Williams tunes. I met Top Cat there. He’s a sax player. He hipped me to The Convent and The Church of Eight Wheels at Fell and Fillmore. It’s an abandoned cathedral, with a convent attached. It’s now an artist’s collective. I moved in, and that was the start of my artistic life. I began writing the songs that are on my first album, Skeletone Machine.”

As the album began taking shape, Undertow went looking for musicians and put together Sweet Undertow. He found his lead guitar player, Jim Semitekol, at a house party. After recruiting bassist John Eckstrom and drummer Dave Tavel, they started gigging, honing the arrangements of the tunes.

The band recorded at producer John Vanderslice’s Tiny Telephone Studio in Oakland. They finished laying down the basic tracks the day before the COVID lockdown started in 2020. “Jim and I had to finish it up remotely,” Undertow said. “We sent stuff back and forth, adding parts contributed by our friends, to get the final sound. It was a slow process, which ended up being a good thing. I think Americans think faster means better, but we did this album slower and slower, making it up as we went along. Ultimately, we got a lot of people to come in and collaborate on it. The record has a lot of voices, from all different walks of life, harmonizing with each other in their own way.” - East Bay Express

Sweet Undertow announces Skeletone Machine, an eclectic blues-based album featuring the guitar stylings of frontman Eddy Undertow, to be released on September 16 via Mother West.

From the Chicago area, Eddy was raised on a steady diet of vintage blues records such as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James, Magic Sam, and John Lee Hooker – as well as the local punk scene. Like Johnny Cash, he has been everywhere. He’s been a wildland firefighter, and has wandered Asia and Europe with a guitar as his only constant companion. He’s played in Crimean bars and in an orphanage in now war-ravaged Ukraine.

He’s taken the long way, so to speak, to San Francisco where he has been fulfilling his lifelong yearning since 2016. The place he had traveled for his grandfather’s funeral as a child “is crazy still, but it’s beautiful,” he says. Eddy’s early, lonely days in the Bay Area birthed what would become Sweet Undertow, including the band’s evocative name.

Eddy honed his creations in a spartan cell in a former convent, sharing them with musician neighbors and future bandmates. Sweet Undertow – bassist John “Big Bottom” Eckstrom, guitarist Jim Semitekol, and drummer Dave Tavel – started landing gigs citywide and soon, by popular demand, commanding headlining slots.

Skeletone Machine operates on multiple layers and levels. Eddy doesn’t miss any of life’s banalities; his songwriting, brimming with memory and metaphor, proves cinematic. He tells ABS of “Rain Catch Flame”:

A tiny cabin: she slept on a thick fur rug in front of a cast-iron stove, flames through the glass door licking wood. It was past midnight. I was awake, beside her, watching the rain. November is the perfect month in Oregon: darker, wetter, more alive.

I watched the fire and, through the window, the rain in the fir trees, and I watched her sleep and thought: You make the rain catch flame.

I imagined the end of days when flame rains down. And I imagined spinning together as the storm of flame rolled into the cities. I imagined her as a storm of flame that had rolled into my life. Her sleeping body, curled on the rug. You make the rain catch flame.

Skeletone Machine was recorded at the all-analog studio of producer John Vanderslice (Death Cab for Cutie, Deerhoof, Spoon) and finished the day before the 2020 lockdown. - American Blues Scene

Rock & Blues Muse is pleased to premiere Sweet Undertow’s new video “Kingdom Come With Me” from their debut album Skeletone Machine out September 16, 2022 via the Mother West imprint. Sweet Undertow is one of San Francisco’s premiere blues/funk bands.

The song is an edgy, tough-shuffling blues/rocker full of big vocals and strong guitar work. The video is a sepia-toned western affair directed by Anthony Sabino that adds much drama and excitement to the tune and is focused on lead singer and guitarist Eddy Undertow’s strong on-camera presence. He’s a lifetime roustabout with a travel diary full of stories to tell and the musical skills to light up any house in the world. His black-hatted rock and roll cowboy style situated against the desert landscape makes for some classic visual Americana that fans will be pulled into immediately.

“Kingdom Come With Me” was tracked at the all-analog studio of producer John Vanderslice (Death Cab for Cutie, Deerhoof, Spoon) with Eddy on lead vocals and guitar getting quality support from bassist John “Big Bottom” Eckstrom, guitarist Jim Semitekol, and drummer Dave Tave. Together, they made a smart, kinetic set of original music that asks all the right questions. “It’s basically me trying to understand the world and my place in it through the lens of blues, rock, country, and Americana music,” said Eddy. “An honest reflection of the past few years of trying to coalesce all this stuff into the music.”

Watch “Kingdom Come with Me”

Sweet Undertow has definitely created a multifaceted sound that pulls as much from 90s alternative music as it does from Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Elmore James. The band puts down an honest, raw vibe fueled mostly by Eddy’s wild years and the experiences he had living as a wandering troubadour adventuring throughout Asia, Europe, and the USA. He has that x-factor that no one can teach and it shows in every note and frame of this clip.

Eddy’s goal is for you to think and dance at the same time. “I try to create moods and paint with lyrics, trying to evoke images in peoples’ minds. But also, y’know, shake their asses,” he said. “Kingdom Come To Me” achieves both quickly and will get listeners fired-up for the rest of the album. This is the song your summer has been waiting for. - Rock & Blues Muse