{"id":707,"date":"2014-08-14T14:22:41","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T18:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/raisedbyswans.com\/new\/?page_id=707"},"modified":"2026-03-02T12:15:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T17:15:03","slug":"bio-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/raisedbyswans.com\/?page_id=707","title":{"rendered":"about"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raised By Swans is Canadian songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist Eric Howden. Fiercely independent in all aspects of his music, spanning five albums and nearly 20 years thus far, Eric’s haunting, contemplative songs have been described as evoking “both mournful and triumphant emotions” (Exclaim!), and have found their way into international film, including Academy Award and Palm d\u2019Or nominated director Atom Egoyan’s Chloe (2010), starring Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore.<\/p>\n

From the very beginning, Eric has written and recorded all of his songs first at home alone, before recreating them part-by-part for release at the House of Miracles studio in Cambridge, Ontario. Over the eight years spent creating Raised By Swans Is The Name Of A Man, <\/em>Volumes 1 and 2, he performed live across Eastern Europe, managed a harbourside grocery shop in the most remote municipality in Iceland, and planted 10,000 baby birch trees in the hills of \u00d6xnadalur (a valley in North Iceland), all by himself.\u00a0 He returned to Canada in late 2019 to finish recording and mixing at the House of Miracles, just in time for a global pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Atom Egoyan is a fan of Eric\u2019s music, and included three songs from Codes and Secret Longing<\/em>\u00a0in his film,\u00a0Adoration\u00a0(2009) and two songs from\u00a0No Ghostless Place<\/em> in the erotic thriller Chloe (2010). In 2007, \u201cViolet Light\u201d from Codes and Secret Longing<\/em> was featured in novelist Douglas Coupland\u2019s film Everything\u2019s Gone Green, voted Canadian Feature Film of the Year at the Vancouver International Film Festival.\u00a0 As for television, Eric’s songs can be heard in episodes of Regenesis, Peak Season, Would Be Kings, Whistler, and most recently, in an Iceland-themed episode of \u201cPasse-Moi Les Jumelles\u201d, a Swiss television series.<\/p>\n

Though unbeknownst to Eric for five years, American rapper Lil Peep had used a looped segment of “spilled more blood”, a song from \u00d6xnadalur<\/em>, as the backing track for one of his earliest singles, “Praying to the Sky”, before a fan from Turkey emailed Eric to alert him of its existence.\u00a0 An agreement has since been reached regarding further use of the song between Eric (Raised By Swans) and Lil Peep’s team. Eric’s account of the experience is here: https:\/\/raisedbyswans.com\/?p=3413<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Raised By Swans Is The Name Of A Man, Volume 2<\/em>: Run With The Silent Wildfires <\/em>is the latest of his albums; his past LPs are Codes and Secret Longing<\/em>\u00a0(2005), No Ghostless Place <\/em>(2010), \u00d6xnadalur<\/em> (2014), and Raised By Swans Is The Name Of A Man, Volume 1<\/em> (2021). He has performed concerts in Germany, Iceland, France, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Greece, Serbia, Hungary, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Russia, and Canada, and will be touring again in Europe and elsewhere in 2026.<\/p>\n

Raised By Swans’ latest single is “locket from a wreck”, and was released on May 7th, 2024. \u00a0 He is currently working on his sixth album, to be released in 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Villa Concordia, 10\/11\/15\n(photo taken by Stephan Obel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Raised By Swans is Canadian songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist Eric Howden. Fiercely independent in all aspects of his music, spanning five albums and nearly 20 years thus far, Eric’s haunting, contemplative songs have been described as evoking “both mournful and triumphant emotions” (Exclaim!), and have found their way into international film, including Academy Award and […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"spay_email":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P5PGUp-bp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/raisedbyswans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/707"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/raisedbyswans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/raisedbyswans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raisedbyswans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raisedbyswans.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=707"}],"version-history":[{"count":275,"href":"https:\/\/raisedbyswans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4422,"href":"https:\/\/raisedbyswans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/707\/revisions\/4422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/raisedbyswans.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}