Album Notes

Swamp Cactus is a collective that has long been the dream of Jack Buddeke. This project is dedicated to composition, collaboration, and the obliteration of stylistic boundaries, all the while aspiring to connect with a diverse audience. We are a group of former and current Portland State University students consisting of Kevin Van Geem, Mary Sue Tobin, Leah Hinchcliff, and Jack Buddeke. We all have extensive experience with different genres of music, which we gladly heave into our pot of musical gumbo. Our music is currently instrumental and would be characterized as contemporary JAZZ but we borrow from all music cultures in which we have experience. We seek to have a collective group identity and ego that will inspire social interplay on the bandstand and off, and, we believe in the value of preparation, which manifests itself in attention to dynamics and composition that plays to the strengths of the group members at the same time challenging them.