Initially formed as the solo vehicle for singer/songwriter David Lamb, Brown Bird was a project rooted in American folk, but with influences that ranged from traditional Balkan music to classic psychedelia. During the latter half of the 2000s, Brown Bird swelled to a trio, then a quintet, and eventually settled into the collaborative duo of Lamb and his wife, fiddler and multi-instrumentalist MorganEve Swain. Based in Rhode Island, they remained productive and musically adventurous into the next decade, releasing albums like 2011's Salt for Salt and 2013's Fits of Reason before Lamb was diagnosed with leukemia. Following his death in 2014, Swain completed Brown Bird's final album, the posthumously released Axis Mundi.