Over the next few months, we’ll be adding posts and tweets and whatnot about the J. Briozo project. J. Briozo is a side project that Swallows are working on under a different name because of the nature of the material seemed different enough from Swallows to merit some separation.
Perhaps not surprisingly, “J.” is Jeff and “Briozo” is Jeff’s mom’s family name. The Briozos (and Contentes) were among the Portuguese immigrants who came to the United States from the Azore Islands and from Brazil in the early 20th century to established dairy farms in the San Joaquin Valley in California and on the Central California coast. There is something in this material that represents that side of Jeff’s upbringing – romantic, melancholic, mystical, earthy (tied to or separated from a specific sense of place and time) – well, something along those lines.
Among other themes, there is a thread of geography represented in these songs – from Minnesota to the Oregon Coast, to San Francisco and Santa Cruz, CA, Las Cruces, New Mexico, Las Vegas, NV, Morocco and the Catalonia region in Spain. Although not completely intentional, the music does seem to reflect this geography as well.
We’ll be setting up a website for the J. Briozo material here: jbriozo.com