Patrick Sweany has never been a one-lane artist. For over two decades, the Ohio-born, East Nashville–based bluesman has slipped between grooves with the ease of a needle on vinyl, whether it be blues, soul, funk, country, or classic rock. And on Baby, It’s Late, his first self-produced album, he brings all of it home. Sweany's latest is an analog-drenched blend of everything that makes his music so undeniably his. It’s also a product of his musical village. Pulling players from two of his side projects - the retro-minded Tiger Beats and the groove-heavy Super Felon - Sweany came up with a record that plays like a mixtape of his past lives, all with his usual signature swagger.

Being in the groove is Sweany's recipe for success, and Baby, It’s Late makes it clear that the man is cooking. There’s a certain weathered wisdom running through the songs, a sense of someone who’s stared down the silence of being alone and come out the other side ready to shake the dust off with some magic. While much of the record is new, Baby, It’s Late also gets strength from looking back. Before the pandemic paused the world, Sweany was already reworking his older material with Austin soul duo Greyhounds (Andrew Trube and Anthony Farrell), breathing new life into deep cuts and unreleased tracks. Those sessions, recorded in Texas and later refined in Nashville with producer Dexter Green, became Get That Feeling, a two-part retrospective project that rolled out across 2020 and 2021. It laid the groundwork, both musically and spiritually, for the new album.

With Baby, It’s Late, though, Sweany isn’t just looking to the past, he’s expanding outward. The grooves are thicker. The guitars crunch harder. The vocals hit deeper. It’s a songwriter’s album, but it’s also a bandleader’s album - loose when it wants to be, tight when it needs to be, and always chasing the feel. It’s a record for those who crave the dusty vinyl warmth of old soul records, the immediacy of barroom blues, or the timeless cool of a good story told right. Twenty years in, Patrick Sweany is still chasing the truth. And he’s still finding it, right there in the groove.