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The Tender Things is a Nasty Band
Thanks to a generous grant from the City of Austin Live Music Fund, a new Tender Things album is complete! The record was tracked late in the summer of 2024, and I’ve been working on finishing it little by little, as time and funding allows, with producer Walker Lukens. The result is the best group of songs collected to date, and the record is titled The Tender Things is a Nasty Band, as indeed a band like this is nasty. Some of the talented folks who helped my make this are Lindsey Verrill, Ricky Jackson, Clint Kirby, Matt Tedder, Matt Strmiska, Jazz Mills, Zac Catanzaro, and Silas Lowe. Look for the album to hit the public summer of 2025! With loads of other projects in other genres in the works, Tenders haven’t been gigging much, but that is changing as we cruise through spring into summer.
Cruising into autumn 2021 we’re finishing work on our next album, titled That Texas Touch. We’ve been working with producer Gordy Quist (of Band of Heathens fame) at his studio in Austin, The Finishing School. It seems we’re wandering yet a little deeper into the forest with this one, and we’re excited to see how it resonates with you all. Mixing is finished, we just have to get it mastered, and queue up at the pressing plant to get some vinyl pressed. It’s a quaint old technology, but it’s a favorite of ours, so we’ll keep holding on as long as our old record players and amps can continue to be repaired. Keep an eye out on the social platforms to keep current on the gig schedule.
The Tender Things released How You Make a Fool, a dark, inward look at the flawed lives of modern characters refracted through the prism of country music. The music is propulsive, like the Swampers’ of Muscle Shoals, and easy associations are drawn to the Bakersfield and Los Angeles sounds of the 60’s and 70’s, but the band’s music is born in the folk forms of Appalachia and mixed in the honkys and dancehalls of central Texas.
Bandleader Jesse Ebaugh cut his teeth in Northern Kentucky with the modern blues rock boogie of Pearlene (Dim Mak, Sympathy for the Record Industry) and the bluegrass band The Kenton County Regulators. His friendship with Erika Wennerstrom led to a decade long stint in Heartless Bastards (Fat Possum, Partisan), and he now exits that project to pursue his own endeavor in The Tender Things.
How You Make a Fool was recorded in Fort Worth, Texas with producer Josh Block (Leon Bridges, White Denim) at his studio Niles City Sound. Ricky Ray Jackson (pedal steel), Gary Newcomb (guitar), Z Lynch (bass) and Matt Strmiska (Drums) were joined by Robert Ellis and Patty Griffin in November and December of 2018 to track the album, and now an official release date is set for March 27, 2020, on the Austin Texas label Spaceflight Records.
