Thomas Costa of Swetband

While traveling through the remote mountaintops of America’s Northeast, we came across Thomas Costa: painter and lead singer of SwetBand- the super-group that's music is teaching a nation to fuck again. 











Where did all of this start? Was there anything specific that got you interested in what you’re doing now?

I grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Images have always fascinated me, when I was very young I was especially interested in images of death.  Most of the questions that I had as a child that went unanswered by adults were about death. It was the one thing that seemed to stump them all, so in a way images of death were my portal into mythology, or into the shadow world. All through my childhood my family and teachers saw me as having a dysfunctional future, I got kicked out of nearly all the schools in C-ville. And lived as a youth, the life that others projected onto me, I was lucky enough to avoid serious trouble though, when I was 14 I got totally into death metal, And spent the next 6 years fucking shit up. 

Eventually it became clear to me that the only shot at a functional career I had would be as an artist, but I always thought id be in a death metal band. I ended up applying to MICA and got in, but I still focused mostly on music. After several frustrating attempts at working with other musicians, I started to realize that with painting, I could do my own thing uninhibited with other people's bullshit.

Most of the people I was trying to play with were flaky in one way or another, either ego, or drug addicts. I started painting and that path opened up for me in a way that the music path did not.

So with that said, how did you end up with SwetBand?

Thomas Costa: Ah the Swet band.  I moved away from Charlottesville at age 17.  That effectively separated me from my friends Seth Elmore, and Burne Wheeler who were my Death metal partners. Most bands that find success at an early age consist of childhood friends. To be in a band with only people you have grown up with is much easier than forming a band with strangers when you are an adult.

So that sort of threw a big ass wrench into our musical cooperation, of course we both continued to play and both had the same kind of experiences over the years. 

One important component of that experience I think was growing out of my old identity. 

When your a high school kid in your hometown it is easy to have a clear self image, say as a druggie or slacker, but then after I moved out of my home town shit was different, I started feeling confined by my "death metal" persona, it just did not work any more. I did not want to be isolated any more, I wanted to live among all kinds of people, I wanted to know all music besides metal, and so I had a bit of a personal renaissance.

I discovered happiness for the first time when I was 19; I put all that depressive shit behind me for a while, (of course it all came back) and got into shit that I had previously rejected. I got into old country music, folk music, psychedelic shit, electronic shit... The SwetBand is a strange project that has recently come about. 

Me and my old buddy Seth realized that we could start a recording project that we could work on digitally from our different locations, and what the music is a combination of all the music we use to make fun of.

It’s hard to explain, but it is the most exiting music I have ever been a part of, it has been made possible in large part due to new digital/home recording technology.  Overall, it is a very serious joke.

We have been around long enough that we can no longer take anything seriously.  Death metal is as ridiculous as disco, is as ridiculous as punk rock, is as ridiculous as Tobey Keith, so in a way this gives us an unlimited source of musical material to rip-off and fuck with and turn into the morbid joke that is the SwetBand.

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Back to your paintings, they seem pretty dark as a whole, but have a sense of humor to them, do you want to get into that at all? And what are you working on now?

The importance of humor in saving me from falling into the abyss cannot be understated. I know humor is equally important to other people to.  Humor to me is much deeper than laughter.  Humor has always been a way to keep me out of despair, and as a strong way of saying fuck you to anything that might hold me down. 

Humor in the face of death and despair has always been fascinating to me. In painting it is also very dynamic. I could never find satisfaction in making a painting that is pure dark without humor, for one thing it would be too easy, and for another, it would offer nothing of substance.

I find artwork that is purely dark to be boring, everyone knows that the world is full of pain, not everyone knows how to laugh at it.  And some people are very uncomfortable with the idea of laughing at it.

I have just completed a series of paintings that I have been working on for the last two years, called "Honest Work".  I have been painting images of dudes, engaged in mundane, or useless tasks, in the
wilderness, or in a dilapidated manmade environment. For a long time I was not sure why I was painting these subjects, but I now understand that each of these dudes and their tasks are in some way parallel to my experience in the studio. For example, one painting is a diptych, on one panel a dude is lighting a cigarette backwards, and on the other panel a dude is standing in a field at dusk, drunk and happy, and is about to be clobbered by a football that he is half heartedly trying to catch.

This is me spending hours all alone in my studio waiting to capture something meaningful.  Both subjects in this painting are about to be blindsided with unpleasant experiences, so this painting is rather pessimistic.  It is about the reverie of the highs and lows of swinging your dick in the art world, and getting the occasional hit among countless misses.

Another example would be changing the blade. In this painting the subject has almost his entire torso snaked into a brutal looking piece of farm equipment that is made up of 3 concentric rings of blades.  The dude is changing a blade at the center, or core of the machine. If this machine were to come to life this guy would be chopped to pieces, every thing about the way I painted the figure is meant to evoke discomfort, there is a fly on his arm, he is holding a wrench in his teeth, and bolts in his fingers as he holds a heavy looking blade at arms length, there is a drop of sweat running down his face, and the format of the painting is too short for him to be able to stand (he would not be able to stand up and fit on the canvas)

So basically these paintings are about my personal struggles. And I don’t want them to come across as defeatist; rather, I want them to come across as hard-core battle paintings, the battle being my life in America in 2006.

Now that I have completed this series, I am planning to change directions a little, and take on the world out side of my self.  I am planning out 2 different series; one will deal with distorted ideas of American history, and the other series will be a completely over the top assault on our nations renewed embrace of War, Violence, and machismo.

Back to SwetBand- I heard that one of the songs is got picked up and used in a trailer. You want to tell me the name of the film?

The SwetBand song " The Smell of Sex" was used in a trailer on the Burning Angle web page, and it will be incorporated into the XXXorsist, which is an adult film parody of The Exorcist. I believe a company called backseat conceptions puts out this movie; they have made other great slasher/porno crossover parodies such as Repenatrator.

How did you guys feel when you first saw people fucking to your music?

I felt like I was in the action. It was very satisfying to see the song put to music, that song was just begging to be in a porno, and thanks to a chance meeting with one of burning angels editors, the magic happened.

Magic indeed. Is there any interest in writing more music with placement in porn in mind? Any ambition to do a full soundtrack?

The Swet Band is not a one trick pony.  I’m sure we will record more songs about sex, but lets not forget about Drugs, Murder, and complete insanity.

Fair enough. As a final question; tell me a quick story about a time that you thought you were going to be killed or a time that you pulled of some shit you'd love at least one more person to know about. It's random I know, but we we're all fuck ups at one point or another and everyone's got this story. Let’s hear it.

Give me a moment.... I remember this one strange evening in Akron Ohio; this was in 2003, during my hard drinking days.  I had driven from Detroit to Akron, to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with my hard drinking buddy Lincoln, and his wonderful brother Andy.  The night before St. Patrick’s Day, we decided to go out for a couple beers, after about 10 beers and a few shots, I lost consciousness and came to in a strange place

Lincoln and me were sitting around a fire, surrounded by young lovely lesbians who were enjoying one another’s company.  I asked where we were, and Lincoln said "Rugby House", I then realized that the fire was actually burning on a concrete slab, which was part of the houses back porch. 

I looked around some more and studied the house. It was a great big dilapidated house, almost a mansion.  It had 3 floors.  The 3rd floor was sort of a finished attic, you know with windows that stick out of the roof, well the wall were there once was a window was completely torn out, there was just a gaping hole in the side of the house, I then herd the sound of a crumpled beer can hitting something

I looked behind me and noticed a handful of rowdy jocks and I realized that they were pounding beers and throwing the cans into the hole in the wall. I then looked at the fire, and realized that they were actually burning pieces of the house. I just kind of said fuck it and started drinking again. Then someone came up to the fire, dragging a huge section of wooden fence to be burned.

Shit just got weirder from there. I think the jocks were High on crank or something, cause they were like jumping around and shit, and one of them had had his front tooth knocked out earlier that day and he did not seem to give a shit. At some point, maybe around 4 in the morning, Lincoln said that he saw some one in the adjacent parking lot, I did not pay attention, then a while later I saw this strange figure in a hooded sweatshirt swaying back and forth in the distance, so of course, Lincoln calls him over.  This was a strange dude, I cant remember his name but he said that he was dying of lung cancer and that he could not sleep anymore because he was in too much pain, although he continued to chain smoke. We had an interesting conversation with him that I cant remember at all, I just remember that it seemed important at the time.

Around six in the morning the jocks all left because one of them had to drive his younger brother to school. So they did that errand and came back. By this point, I was totally out of steam, you know. Staying up till 6 drinking without respite, so when the jocks got back they said " hey lets go to specollie's in the valley for breakfast.

For some reason I assumed that that meant we were going to a diner, or something along those lines, so after a long grueling drunken car ride, past the mail man, passed the paper boy, past old people, crossing guards, and young mothers walking their kids to pre-school, we arrived at yet another strange house.

We went in to meet Specollie, who was another dude, who for some reason was awake and lively at 6:00 in the morning and making Ruben Sandwiches. So he was generous enough to give me a sandwich, and then the drinking started again. By this point I had something of a second wind, and just sort of said fuck it all over again, I noticed a pogo stick in the drive way, so I decided to see how many beers I could chug consecutively while bouncing on the pogo stick.  I made it to 5 beers, then burped up some suds, took a deep hit of pot, and that was it for me.  I guess at some point Lincoln dragged me away from there.  We later found out that all of those dudes got arrested a few hours later for starting a bar fight somewhere. Akron is a fucked up place.

Downloads

firstktstofthenight.mp3
whitehotice.mp3
smellofsex.mp3

Website

http://www.myspace.com/theswetband