One month is up, and Communion is back for its second installment in Madison. With it comes Tennis, the nostalgic, pop-rock duo from Colorado. Although their home is in the mountains, the married couple’s first album was conceived on a trip that helped give the band national attention: an eight-month sailing trip down the eastern seaboard. I spoke with lead singer Alaina Moore about the trip, as well as their newest release, Small Sound.
Tennis is as much a love story as a rock band. Moore and husband Patrick Riley met each other in college and decided to make music together. Not long after this, they ditched the every day for a fairy tale journey on the sea to pen love songs. No, this is not a Garry Marshall flick. It’s not a Hans Christian Andersen story. It’s simply the life we all dream about.
“We had led the most normal, unimaginative lives,” Moore said. “After finishing college, Patrick and I felt like all of our life had just been read about in books and not manifested in any way. It was something Patrick had wanted to do his whole life, so we started sailing together. We just decided to connect through it even though it’s a little absurd, because we were obviously land locked in Colorado.
I had actually never been to the ocean before. I told everyone that I knew that in six months we were selling everything and moving away. The more people we told, the more committed we were. I couldn’t back out of it because I would look like a huge dick. We just made it real. We sold all of our possessions as soon as we graduated, bought one way tickets to Florida and left.”
Upon their return, the dream continued. The personal songs they wrote at sea turned into Cape Dory, their 2011 debut album, which gained positive reviews and a feature on NPR.
“It was a really transformative time. It felt magical. The lives we were leading had been so isolated, and the fact that something we did connected with a lot of people was really weird,” Moore said. “The was the number one compelling reason to start pursuing a career in music. We ended up sharing what would be universal emotions even though our experience was so unique. Once you have that, it’s kind of like a drug. You don’t want to give it up.”
The band enlisted The Black Keys’ drummer Patrick Carney to produce their 2012 album, Young & Old. Tennis doesn’t rock the same hard-nosed grunge sound as The Black Keys, but Moore insisted that the pairing could not have been better.
“The learning curve was really high, almost painfully so. We didn’t know a lot about making a record, but Carney was a lot more experienced with it. We were huge Black Keys fans; that kind of gritty rock ‘n’ roll edge is something that we really like,”Moore said. “Even though our music came out differently, we consider ourselves born out of the lo-fi movement. Wavves’ first album changed my life, just pure distortion. Even though it seemed like an unusual pairing, to us it made a lot of sense. He seemed like the only person we could bring on board to get the sound we wanted.”
Tennis spent time in Nashville this summer working on their EP Small Sound. The first single, “Mean Streets,” was released a few weeks ago, and it sounds like the band picked up a cool groove down south.
“I wish I could tell you what our new album will sound like. Our taste keeps evolving. The more we play live, the wider net I want to cast. I lose interest if I do the same thing night after night,” Moore said. “After we play a show, I want to write a song that’s more and more different from anything I’ve ever played before. I’m not sure where we’ll land by the time we finish a full length record, but I hope it will push us in the furthest reaches of pop music.”
Joining Tennis at Communion this month will be University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire product Building on Buildings. The four-piece band, which formed in early 2013, goes in a few genre directions with their self-titled three-song EP, or as they like to call it, a “3P.”
“Connie, Shawn and I were all in a band called Thieves on Holiday, but hadn’t done anything musically for a while,” lead singer Erin Fuller explained. “I took a lot of time off of playing music to be a mom and sort out some bigger life stuff. Once I moved back to Madison, the clouds kind of lifted and I started songwriting again. To light a fire under our ass, Connie and I decided to book a small tour, a winter respite, to points south as a duo in late March. The collective started practicing in February, went on tour in late March and released our little ‘3P’ just before our first full band show at the High Noon this past June.”
With just three songs on the EP, the band certainly shows their chops. Fuller can break your heart with her voice and put it back together with magnetic melodies and lyrics. You can hear in it the indie folk shades of Florence + the Machine and fellow Eau Claire musician Justin Vernon, along with the lo-fi rock sounds of Pavement and Wilco. If you look at their Facebook page, they list themselves as mercurial rock.
“Our sound is a confluence of our individual influences, which overlap and diverge. Whoever is writing any given song usually takes the lead,” Fuller said. “We’re all music junkies with broad collections spanning decades of great music, so we like to sprinkle in a bit of any and everything that trips our trigger. Indie, but not too precious.”
Fuller and the rest of the band just finished recording in Eau Claire for their first LP, which will be released in February or March 2014.
“We had a fantastic experience recording with the brilliant Jaime Hansen at April Base! Just got the first pass at rough mixes and it sounds amazing,” Fuller said. “Since we all have stupid busy lives, this was really the first time since inception that we’ve been in one place to just concentrate on music. It was like band camp.”
It isn’t easy for Fuller to juggle the senior designer position at Planet Propaganda, a Madison-based design and advertising agency, with being a single parent to a busy 5-year-old boy. Still, she’s happy to squeeze music into her hectic schedule.
“An idle mind is not my friend. I started out as a flute major in school, but discovered I didn’t want to be locked in a practice room for most of my college career,” Fuller said. “So, I fell into the design field and pursued musical endeavors outside of school. Music always played a huge part in my life. It’s my therapy, my constant, my motivation. Music is my boyfriend.”
Tennis and Building on Buildings will take the stage at The Frequency for Communion Nov. 20 at 8 p.m. You can also catch Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats, On and On, Savoir Adore and Brandon Beebe.
