Swamp City Stompers
Swamp City StompersThe Challenge
The Swamp City Stompers are a raw, swampy Ottawa Valley roots band — the kind of act that fills a bar on a Tuesday. Their existing web presence didn't come close to matching the energy they bring live. Generic band templates, low-effort layouts, nothing that felt like them.
The ask: a site that hits you the same way the music does. Immersive, a little rough around the edges, built for the band's actual audience — not a digital brochure dressed up as a website.
The Approach
We built the site as a multi-page scroll-driven experience using GSAP, ScrollTrigger, and Lenis for smooth scroll. Barba.js handles page transitions with a cinematic "lift" effect between sections — no page reloads, no flash of white.
The homepage opens with a looping grunge video hero layered with a scratch texture overlay and the band logo animation. Sections are choreographed: band member cards scroll-reveal, the tour accordion pulls from a centralized data file, and the Watch section serves YouTube facade embeds (zero YouTube JavaScript until the user clicks — no performance hit).
Sub-pages (Tour, Story, EPK, Merch) each carry their own darkened hero images and share a consistent layout system. The story page uses a staggered left/right timeline telling the band's origin. The EPK uses a split-screen layout built for booking agents.
The Result
A complete multi-page band website with scroll animations, smooth page transitions, tour management, a merch page, and an EPK — all built without a CMS or page builder. The dark/gold aesthetic holds across every page and every screen size.
Performance was a constraint throughout: GSAP ticker callbacks are cleaned up on every Barba transition, Lenis is destroyed and reinitialized cleanly, and YouTube embeds don't load until the user interacts with them. The site is fast on mobile because it was built to be.
Currently finalizing the contact page and staging deployment at swampcitystompers.ca.