Crooked Fingers - SWET DETH, DIGNITY AND SHAME TOUR

Age Restriction - 18+

Doors - 7:00 PM

Show - 8:00 PM

On January 29, 2027, Dignity and Shame, the fourth full length album by Eric Bachmann’s beloved outfit Crooked Fingers, returns to vinyl via Merge Records. Out-of-print on the format since 2005, the remastered 2xLP set comes complete with two vinyl-exclusive bonus tracks and is housed in a gatefold jacket with expanded artwork, treatment befitting an album that has, in the quarter century since its release, been recognized as one of the brightest jewels in Bachmann’s considerable catalog.

This wasn’t always the case. After 2003’s Red Devil Dawn — not just the third Crooked Fingers album, but the third released in four years — Bachmann had successfully forged a new identity for himself and established a sonic signature for his band that was entirely different from what he had done with Archers of Loaf, becoming a raconteur of forlorn, desperate lives spelled out in pained, exacting detail. While the collaborators who made that sound possible returned to make Dignity and Shame, the sound itself changed, embracing the bright, cinematic sweep of the American southwest, a sprawling vista Bachmann and his band eagerly galloped across. The soaring, joyful abandon of this album signaled a change, not just for Crooked Fingers, but for Bachmann, who today views Dignity and Shame as part of a broader attempt at moving past bad habits.

They say you shouldn't run from your problems, and sometimes they're wrong. This was one of those times. Bachmann's therapist told him to leave Atlanta, where he was staying up until the sun came out every night, barely sleeping, and drinking and smoking himself ragged, and head to a place where he could build new habits—to "get out of a community where I was just going to keep partying," he says today, and "go to a good community" with a tight support network. In Seattle he joined his long-time lawyer, manager, and friend Shawn Nolan, as well as his friend and musician Barton Carroll, who became a part of Crooked Fingers in 2002. It was in Seattle where Bachmann wrote most of Dignity and Shame, and where he recorded it with Martin Feveyear at Jupiter Studios.

He wasn't just looking to change his scenery or his lifestyle. "I was sick of being curmudgeonly," the former Archers of Loaf singer says. "I wanted to write a pop record, something uplifting. I wanted to get out of the muck I was in. I was trying very hard to not be so gloomy, not be so dour, like the first two Crooked Fingers records were. I was trying to just write a pop record, and I feel pretty good about it.”

"I don't feel great about it. I never feel great about anything."

What does "uplifting" mean to the guy who gave us records as bleak and melancholy as Crooked Fingers' debut and Bring On The Snakes? Take a crucial line in "Sleep All Summer," one of Dignity and Shame's standout songs, which was later covered by fellow luminaries St. Vincent and The National, and Neko Case: "I would change for you but, babe, that doesn't mean I'm gonna be a better man." It's hard to imagine the "curmudgeonly" Bachmann of earlier days admitting that change is even possible, so although it's still fatalistic, it counts as positivity in these parts.

"Sleep All Summer" is one of several duets with Lara Meyerratken on Dignity and Shame. Her winsome lilt draws something then-unheard of out of Bachmann—a tender higher register, hinted at in 2003's Red Devil Dawn album and presaged by a falsetto he used selectively on the first Crooked Fingers record. There's a special connection between the two voices. "We had tried a few other things singing-wise with those duets," he says, "and when we got Lara to sing, it was so clear. All the songs became very believable, and she was just so good at singing that character in those songs. She just had the right voice for the songs."

"I love 'Sleep All Summer,'" Bachmann says today. "I'm so amazed at what's happened to that song, and happy and grateful. And I love the story in that."

Dignity and Shame, like most Crooked Fingers records, is an album about stories, of loves lost and kept, forgotten and lingered on. It's mistakenly been called a "concept album" about doomed real-life lovers Manolete and Lupe Sino, a Spanish bullfighter and an actress who had a tragic relationship in the '40s; Bachmann clarifies that only two songs and the album artwork are directly inspired by their story, but it resonated with Bachmann in the first place because it echoes what he had long been writing about. Love can't overcome our fundamental weakness, but on Dignity and Shame he comes around to thinking they can maybe coexist, at least.

Bachmann has changed since he wrote these songs, and he'd probably say he's become a better man. He quit hard drugs and smoking in Seattle two decades ago, and is now a husband and a father. A massive heart attack on Halloween 2025 almost ended his life, but his heart had naturally developed its own bypasses, which kept him alive. Moving to Seattle almost 25 years ago, and getting himself to a healthier place and more supportive community, put him on this path; it also gave us Dignity and Shame. "That was the smartest thing I did, getting those folks around me," Bachmann reflects today. "That was a good decision, and I hear that when I hear the record."