Musician

It was always music, after spending his childhood studying classical music, Swinnen discovered in his early teens pop-music. He started to sing and perform in local bands and teamed up with his brothers and some friends to form his own projects.

Being very focused on a unique sound and identity it was not always the easiest path, and certainly quite impossible to make a living from being a musician those days. Swinnen tried in the early days to join coverbands to make a living from performing live, but he found it impossible to commit his time into copying existing hits for mostly drunk people on a weddingparty…? 

It would take until 1999 until Swinnen joined Vive La Fête, his first major international touring project, which was discovered by Karl Lagerfeld and resulted in a host of catwalk shows and events with Karl himself. They travelled the world and had great success with the radio hit “Touche Pas”, co-written and produced by Swinnen It was in the following years things really started to happen.

While he was in Vive La Fête, Swinnen would meet many other artists and acts on the road. In 2002 Swinnen joined Dead Man Ray singer Daan Stuyven’s liveband (and still is member of that band 20 years later) and in 2004 (after leaving Vive La Fête in 2003) he joined Novastar on stage.  He would keep touring with these 2 major acts, performing over 100 shows per year. In the following years Swinnen would join other bands and artists, mostly after producing their records (Superdiesel, Yum, Jan Leyers, …) but would use most of his time in the studio, writing and producing music with and for a wide variety of artists.