"Swamp Moss Soul" may very well be the best song B Howard Crist has released.
Throughout 2023 and 2024, Crist had released three singles - "The nameless (Live at Diddy's Kantina)," "Drive Away," and "The Way to Yesterday (Acoustic Version)."
"Swamp Moss Soul," like Crist's prior music, holds a strong outlaw country influence. I like to call it 'country music with soul.' Much of Crist's music is autobiographical, based on his own life experiences, or the experiences of his friends and family.
Crist released the first version of "Swamp Moss Soul" on November 28 with a music video following in early December.
The acoustic version was then released on December 21.
I spoke to B Howard Crist about the story behind the song, the writing and recording process, and his love for music.
LP: What’s the story behind the song?
BHC: The song started as a little guitar part that I was playing one late night at Diddy’s Kantina, while it was still open. I had a key to the place, and that’s where I would do most of my practicing in the venue, and the lick just stuck out; I couldn’t let it go.
So I went to Matthew Mulnix in Lawrence and showed him what I had. I explained the concept of what I wanted the story to be, which is breaking generational curses. I had just started talking to my now girlfriend, and I haven’t had a whole lot of luck in the relationship department, and I could really tell that this woman was different. But there were some circumstances that required me to keep everything at arms-length and not really be able to tell even my best friend about her. So with her on my mind and the circumstances that I was in, I just wanted to write a song coming from the perspective of someone who is really on the ropes emotionally and mentally from the difficulty of many failed relationships. I was kind of inspired by a Jason Isbell lyric: “Heart like the rebuilt part, I don’t know how much it has left.”
LP: What was the songwriting process like? How long did it take to write?
BHC: I sat down with Matthew and he’s just a brilliant artist who just speaks fluent songwriting and I would say we had the demo tracked in about two hours.
Oddly enough a couple weeks after we tracked the demo, I got a call from my cousin telling me that he just found out that my great-great great-great-great-grandfather was part of Quantrill’s Raiders and “Bloody Bill” Anderson’s guerilla soldiers and was in on the raid that burnt Lawrence, Kansas to the ground - which was actually in retaliation to the Jayhawkers coming over to the Missouri side in raiding farms and took several women prisoner, put them in a jail and then burn it down. In hindsight, it was extremely poetic; I thought that we would write a song in Lawrence, Kansas about breaking generational curses when my ancestors were once living embodiment of what I was writing a song about as a Civil War soldier, something that II didn’t know prior to writing the hook to the song.
So the rhetoric and the word usage seem to be guided by some divine intervention. But after we tracked the demo, we didn’t revisit the song together for several months, and Matthew had recently gotten into a serious relationship with someone he’s head over heels with, and he produced the version that you’ll hear in the official music video working alongside studio engineer Steven Bankey of Steven Bankey and the Flatlands band at his studio in Kansas City 2 Bird Studios. We had done the official release of the song. In a strange almost another divinely guided set of circumstances he extended his interest in taking the recording and production to a level he really felt the song deserved. That came ten minutes after a call from Matthew asking me to find someone to mix and master the track due to other arrangements he had in his life that was taking more time than he could afford to offer to the project. So in a leap of faith, we trusted Bankey to see it through and he absolutely crushed it out of the park.
But in the meantime, while that was going on, I had sat with my vision of the song as I had explained previously just expressing a lovesick wounded soul on the ropes really, really hoping that this is the one because he doesn’t know that he has it in him to start over again. So that’s when I played the acoustic version for Steven and immediately he fell in love with that version as well. And wanted to capture it so we recorded it. Just me and my guitar in a single take once again at 2 Bird Studios and released that acoustic rendition about a month later on my birthday. I think the two in comparison really show both sides of the coin as far as the human experience for love, and I couldn’t be happier with either outcome.
LP: How has your music evolved since you started?
BHC: As far as the evolution of my music, I really don’t know; I don’t look at it as trying to evolve. See, I can look back through my entire life and see that many times I was under the impression that I was alone for most of that which is really hard on a human being; but as I’ve gotten older, I have been able to look back and realize that music was always there. See I have loved music my whole life; to put it simply, I am in love with music. I feel as though music is alive with its own entity and consciousness, and we are almost just conduit for what it wants to allow to move through us.
So evolving isn’t my concern. I look at it as the love for a partner. I just want to do the absolute best thing that I can do of the best quality that I can produce, with honesty and complete transparency, denying fear and striving to tell unapologetic truth for music’s sake.
So one might say that there’s evolution, but one could also say that I’ve gotten to know myself better to allow me to express more freely the greatest love I may have ever known.
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