The Boston Globe, June 1 2013 • Hilary Hughes
It was when playing his own songs became an insurmountable feat that Dave Lamb knew something was very wrong. Lamb and MorganEve Swain — who together make up Rhode Islander folk duo Brown Bird — had been touring nationally in support of their latest record, “Fits of Reason,” since its release on April 2. From the onset, Lamb felt off — the extreme exhaustion typical of the road wasn’t foreign to him, but this was different — and Brown Bird’s raucous repertoire suddenly went from providing passionate performances to impassable challenges for him. By Houston, Lamb had reached a point of fatigue that forced them to cut the set short and rush to the emergency room, and it was there that his hemoglobin count became the first of many life-changing numbers that would eventually add up to a leukemia diagnosis.
