Richard Swift

BIOGRAPHY

Richard Swift, born Ricardo Ochoa in 1977, grew up in a musical Quaker family that moved often between Minnesota, Utah, and Oregon before he settled in Southern California in 2001 to pursue solo recording. His early work, including The Novelist (2003) and The Richard Swift Collection Vol. 1, drew from a lifelong study of American pop history, and he later signed to Secretly Canadian, releasing Dressed Up For the Letdown in 2007 before touring with Wilco. Beyond his own records, Swift became a sought-after producer and multi-instrumentalist, running his National Freedom studio in Oregon and working with the Shins, Damien Jurado, Foxygen, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Fleet Foxes, and many others. He also played in Starflyer 59, the Shins, and the Arcs, and toured as bassist with the Black Keys. Swift died in 2018 in Tacoma, Washington, following complications from alcohol addiction; his final album, The Hex, arrived posthumously that September.

WHY THEY'RE COOL

Richard Swift's fingerprints are on a remarkable stretch of 2000s and 2010s indie rock, not just as a singer-songwriter steeped in Tin Pan Alley, Motown, and Wall of Sound influences, but as the producer and collaborator behind gold-certified records like Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats' debut. He moved fluidly between frontman, sideman, and studio architect, playing with the Shins, the Arcs, and the Black Keys while shaping the sound of Foxygen, Fleet Foxes, and Damien Jurado from behind the board at his own National Freedom studio, making him one of the era's quietly essential connective figures.

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