There’s at least two remarkable things about Columbus, Ohio’s blues and folk-influenced band The Black Swans: their smart and emotionally resonant songwriting, and the sweetly sad pastels of their music.

Singer, guitarist and songwriter Jerry DeCicca delves deep into the confusing nuances of the human condition, crafting songs about existential crises on The Swans’debut Who Will Walk in the Darkness with You? and spiritual investigations on last year’s Change!

“It’s always been part of at least one style of good writing, which is trying to look into a corner that a lot of people haven’t already, or at least in a different way,” DeCicca says. “It’s easier to avoid the clichés of human emotions and experiences that way.”

Recently, DeCicca has been studying other songwriters, driving around the country to meet and interview obscure songwriters he’s long admired. He started out planning to do four or five profiles, but now the project has expanded to book length with six or seven subjects. The project has even led DeCicca to producing the first album recorded in the past 30 years by Larry Jon Wilson, one of the musicians profiled for the book.

DeCicca hopes his interview project interests more readers than just music fans, drawing “anybody who wants to get a cursory glance at maybe how somebody lives and why and how they created. It’s really tied into music, but it’s also tied into history and geography, stuff like that.”

While DeCicca may take an interest in outcast musicians, he knows his craft belongs in the Midwest.

“People here are just as open-minded as they are on the coasts,” he says. “There just aren’t as many places to play [here] for a band like us. Our music, in a weird way, is very Midwestern. Even though there may not be a lot of bands that sound like us, people here are less concerned about what’s considered fashionable.”