SWAMP DOGG GETS HIS POOL PAINTED - Mark Reviews Movies

Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted, Magnolia Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 1, 2025

We learn just enough about Jerry Williams Jr., better known—to the degree that the musician actually is known—by the stage name Swamp Dogg, to call this a biographical documentary. The spirit of Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted, though, is more aligned with the relaxed, passive, and somewhat mundane nature of the film's title. Directors Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson (along with co-director David McMurry) just hang out with Swamp Dogg, his two housemates, and select friends and neighbors who stop by to chat. This isn't so much about the man's life and career as it is about his personality.

In a way, then, the film might give us a better understanding of its subject than some routine account of his professional life would have. After all, it's one thing to learn that a musician like Swamp Dogg has been making music since the 1950s, singing and writing and producing for himself and others, but it's another to see him at home with nothing special to do and realizing that the music is almost always at the front of his mind.

The man hasn't had a hit song of any notoriety since the late '70s, but that doesn't mean a thing to Swamp Dogg. As long as he's making music and spending time with people who like and respect him and vice versa, what else could a musician or, for that matter, a person want from life? It's more than enough for Swamp Dogg, who doesn't seem to have any regrets, hard feelings against anyone, or reason to bemoan that things didn't turn out the way he wanted or could have been better. A good number of us will probably wonder what the man's secret is.

It does just seem to be a matter of thinking a certain way about oneself, one's accomplishments, and what the purpose of life should be. That's the feeling we get watching Swamp Dogg, as he sits on some patio furniture by his in-ground pool, while a local contractor paints it. The two of them talk a bit, and if not for the fact that a camera is capturing all of this, the film doesn't give much of an impression that there's much reason to care about some seemingly ordinary guy getting some work done at his suburban Los Angeles home.

Soon enough, though, the film shows us that Swamp Dogg isn't just some guy. He did sing some hits, and he even wrote some bigger ones for other artists. At one point, he owned nine cars—a fact he still can't believe, mainly because it seems so ludicrously unnecessary now.

Those songs may not have stood the test of time, of course, but chart listing and metallic records (of which the man has a few) are for those who care about such things. Swamp Dogg knows what he has, what he has done with his career, and that he still has music to make with however many years he has left. His 80th birthday occurs while the filmmakers spend time capturing his life, but considering how content he generally is and enthusiastic he becomes when talking about or making music, one imagines those years will be productive, no matter how many of them there actually are.

The narrative does go through the basics of his career, although it mostly becomes a string of interviews on public access TV-looking shows and a series of anecdotes. Swamp Dogg can tell a story, to be sure, and he holds court, like some king of blunt talk and contagious geniality, poolside while folks like Mike Judge, actor Tom Kenny, and Johnny Knoxville come by to see how Swamp Dogg is. He's fine, as he usually is, and everyone talks just long enough and with no sense of forcing some kind of importance to the conversation to believe that this is how things would go even if cameras weren't present.

It's not just Swamp Dogg at the house, though. It's also home to Larry "Moogstar" Clemons, a most particularly peculiar but charming artist himself, and the late David "Guitar Shorty" Kearney, a blues guitarist who was once on the verge of potentially big-time stardom but stage fright got the better of him before what could have been a life-changing gig.

He doesn't have regrets, either, because he's still playing, spending time and making music with his best friend Swamp Dogg, and able to show footage of himself obviously getting past those worries about performing—right up until his death during the documentary's production. The film is a sweet tribute to Guitar Shorty, even if the filmmakers weren't aware it would be and especially when the guitarist explains his living situation is mainly to keep a final promise to Swamp Dogg's late, beloved wife.

Meanwhile, there's Moogstar, who's as off-beat as Swamp Dogg can be but amplified in his persona. He has some fun stories, including one at the grave of Evel Knievel, and a rather sad one about how he decided to embrace his eccentricities. As with his housemates, Moogstar understands that how a person sees oneself is far more important than how anyone else might. He's all the better for it now, producing music and videos on his own and with some help from his friends.

Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted, in other words, is an experience more than anything else. That experience is pleasant, funny, and, beneath all the quirks of these subjects and the filmmaking (animated re-creations, ironic jump cuts, and bold titles announcing the players and different events), quietly moving and subtly inspiring about a group of people embracing who they are, finding kindred spirits, and having a good time with life.

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