David Freel formed the San Francisco based rock band Swell in 1989 after meeting drummer Sean Kirkpatrick. They released a self-titled debut album on their own pSychosPecificMusic label in April 1990 and played their first show that August at San Francisco’s I-Beam, opening for Mazzy Star. They would release nearly a dozen albums and compilations over the next two decades, including …Well? (1991), Too Many Days Without Thinking (1997), and For All the Beautiful People (1998). Freel wrote 2001’s Everybody Wants to Know mostly on his own, and, by 2009’s Be My Weapon, he had dropped the Swell name entirely. His last album was 2014’s Greasy. He passed away in April 2022.