Nice new tune by Leon Bridges and Khruangbin. Khruangbin is a trio from Houston. Nice smooth, laid-back tune.
From the Dallas Morning News
Leon Bridges still gets nervous in the studio. “It’s all still new for me,” he says, a year after winning his first Grammy. “You know, I literally went from making my first album in Fort Worth to having to go to L.A. and work with producers and writers that I’ve never worked with before. And that whole process is crazy, you know, just adjusting to peoples’ energy and vibes and style.”
The former steakhouse dishwasher, who rose to fame on the strength of a single called “Coming Home,” turned 30 last summer. He’s on the phone in Los Angeles, where he’s at work on his third album. On it, he hopes to distance himself even more from the straight ahead soul sound that defined his debut and that he’s said pigeonholed him as a kind of Otis Redding 2.0, a “retro” act.
Last March, in between tour dates, he found himself in a warehouse in Houston with the rising stars of Khruangbin, a genre-bending trio that took an unlikely step out of obscurity with the release of their second album in 2018. (The name is a play on the Thai word for “airplane.”) Made up of Laura Lee on bass, Mark Speer on guitar and Donald “DJ” Johnson on drums, the group had toured with Bridges in 2018. Now, he was on their turf. The warehouse, one of dozens now experiencing new life in Houston’s post-industrial EaDo neighborhood, serves as home to Khruangbin’s go-to audio engineer Steve Christensen; quite literally, he lives there, along with his two cats. It’s also where Khruangbin goes to touch up and mix its albums. They’ve released three since 2015, all of them ethereal, instrumental and globally inspired — with a laid-back, in-the-pocket feeling that’s there no matter what.
“Man, it was so organic,” Bridges says. “It was definitely the most —” he pauses for a second, “one of my favorite recording experiences.” The course correction is key. Bridges knows there’s a fine line between thoughtfulness and the appearance of being ungrateful. He is grateful and he makes a point to say so — for his management, for the big studio muscle he’s afforded nowadays. He doesn’t want people to think otherwise. But still, this project felt different to him, and perhaps more real.
“It was like making music with some homies,” he says. The last song on the EP, “Conversion,” is the first tune he ever wrote, he says. Somehow, it didn’t make it onto either of his albums. Maybe it was meant to be.
Taking stock
Musically, there’s not so much Leon and Khruangbin have in common. What fueled their kinship was that both needed to hit the pause button, even just briefly, on their musical routines. For the last few years, Khruangbin has been touring more or less nonstop. “And we haven’t really had a minute to sit and think about how we feel about it,” says Lee. In the press, Khruangbin’s members have expressed surprise at their popularity. “I mean, we’re this band with a weird name, playing mainly instrumental music with a weird stage presence. I never anticipated any of this stuff could happen,” guitarist Mark Speer told the Houston Chronicle’s Andrew Dansby last October.
Bridges has made peace with his fame. He’s now facing a different kind of artistic problem, navigating the age-old recording artist’s struggle between a desire to be authentic and a demand to sell records. “People don’t know that before I made Coming Home, I was writing R&B music,” he says. “It was just at that time, I was really inspired by ’50s and ’60s R&B.” He decided to “switch gears and tell my narrative through that sound,” but didn’t intend for it to become his entire identity.
One thing that’s gnawed at him is his audience; it’s overwhelmingly white. The irony — here’s a black singer, making black music — hasn’t been lost on Bridges, or the press. “Love — like real — love to people, everyone that supports me,” he says on the phone. “But sometimes that gets to me. Only because, like, as a black man, I want to see more of my people support the music,” he says.
Leon Bridges performs at the Toyota Music Factory in Irving on June 9, 2018.(Lawrence Jenkins / Special Contributor)
Faced with career pressures, both Bridges and Khruangbin have in the past fallen back on the concept of place. When they record their own albums, Khruangbin does so in a barn in Burton, about halfway between Houston and Austin, off Highway 290. Bridges has been vocal in branding himself a Texas artist, even though his music doesn’t quite register as Texana.
“People there are genuine,” Bridges says, speaking of Fort Worth, where he still lives. “I can pull up to a bar and have a conversation with a cat who might not necessarily know who I am,” something, he says, that’s still important to him. On the flip side, he’s proud when his musical peers recognize his roots.
“I remember I had an encounter with Abel, a.k.a. The Weeknd,” says Bridges. “I was at one of my favorite bars in L.A. called Tenants of the Trees. And my friend introduced me to him,” he says. “Oh yeah, what’s up, man? You that kid from, ah, Texas,” he says the singer told him. “And I was like, ‘Well, there we go.’”
Lately, many journalists have stopped applying genre labels to Khruangbin’s music, which is a compliment. For one, it reflects their notoriety: People know them now. It also means their music speaks for itself. The demand for comparison is no longer there. What they do, listeners recognize, is authentic.
Bridges has been boxed in by genre ever since he sang that first “Baby, baby, baby,” on Coming Home, with such impeccable smoothness people thought he was the second coming of Sam Cooke. Though he’s tried — his second album stepped away from soul while still staying grounded in it — he hasn’t quite broken out of that mold yet. Maybe that’s why these sessions were so special to him. For a few days recording in the warehouse, he got a rare chance to just do his thing.
What’s next
“I feel like he’s family now,” Lee says of Bridges. On their next album, Khruangbin plans to add lyrics, a first for the band. It’s something they felt like they could never do, Lee explains. “Nobody wanted to sing, nobody wanted to write words,” she says. Working with Bridges on his own words for the EP gave them the confidence to start writing lyrics on their own. “Apparently I had a lot to say," Lee says. “So I said it.”
Bridges’ next album is set to include at least one of the tunes that didn’t make the EP, he says. He knows not all his listeners will be on board with what he puts out. “I probably alienated some fans with my second album and I probably will alienate more with the third one,” he says. But he sees the switch as something he needs to do for himself. In June, his touring schedule kicks into full swing. In the meantime, he’s doing some one-off shows.
Khruangbin ships off to New Zealand and Australia in April to tour with Tame Impala. “I think I’m at a place — this is me speaking personally, I don’t feel like I need to get any more successful," Lee says. "I’m really happy where I’m at, and with what we’ve accomplished.” It’s an admirable sentiment, but it’s not the trajectory Khruangbin’s on.
From the Dallas Morning News
Leon Bridges still gets nervous in the studio. “It’s all still new for me,” he says, a year after winning his first Grammy. “You know, I literally went from making my first album in Fort Worth to having to go to L.A. and work with producers and writers that I’ve never worked with before. And that whole process is crazy, you know, just adjusting to peoples’ energy and vibes and style.”
The former steakhouse dishwasher, who rose to fame on the strength of a single called “Coming Home,” turned 30 last summer. He’s on the phone in Los Angeles, where he’s at work on his third album. On it, he hopes to distance himself even more from the straight ahead soul sound that defined his debut and that he’s said pigeonholed him as a kind of Otis Redding 2.0, a “retro” act.
Last March, in between tour dates, he found himself in a warehouse in Houston with the rising stars of Khruangbin, a genre-bending trio that took an unlikely step out of obscurity with the release of their second album in 2018. (The name is a play on the Thai word for “airplane.”) Made up of Laura Lee on bass, Mark Speer on guitar and Donald “DJ” Johnson on drums, the group had toured with Bridges in 2018. Now, he was on their turf. The warehouse, one of dozens now experiencing new life in Houston’s post-industrial EaDo neighborhood, serves as home to Khruangbin’s go-to audio engineer Steve Christensen; quite literally, he lives there, along with his two cats. It’s also where Khruangbin goes to touch up and mix its albums. They’ve released three since 2015, all of them ethereal, instrumental and globally inspired — with a laid-back, in-the-pocket feeling that’s there no matter what.
“Man, it was so organic,” Bridges says. “It was definitely the most —” he pauses for a second, “one of my favorite recording experiences.” The course correction is key. Bridges knows there’s a fine line between thoughtfulness and the appearance of being ungrateful. He is grateful and he makes a point to say so — for his management, for the big studio muscle he’s afforded nowadays. He doesn’t want people to think otherwise. But still, this project felt different to him, and perhaps more real.
“It was like making music with some homies,” he says. The last song on the EP, “Conversion,” is the first tune he ever wrote, he says. Somehow, it didn’t make it onto either of his albums. Maybe it was meant to be.
Taking stock
Musically, there’s not so much Leon and Khruangbin have in common. What fueled their kinship was that both needed to hit the pause button, even just briefly, on their musical routines. For the last few years, Khruangbin has been touring more or less nonstop. “And we haven’t really had a minute to sit and think about how we feel about it,” says Lee. In the press, Khruangbin’s members have expressed surprise at their popularity. “I mean, we’re this band with a weird name, playing mainly instrumental music with a weird stage presence. I never anticipated any of this stuff could happen,” guitarist Mark Speer told the Houston Chronicle’s Andrew Dansby last October.
Bridges has made peace with his fame. He’s now facing a different kind of artistic problem, navigating the age-old recording artist’s struggle between a desire to be authentic and a demand to sell records. “People don’t know that before I made Coming Home, I was writing R&B music,” he says. “It was just at that time, I was really inspired by ’50s and ’60s R&B.” He decided to “switch gears and tell my narrative through that sound,” but didn’t intend for it to become his entire identity.
One thing that’s gnawed at him is his audience; it’s overwhelmingly white. The irony — here’s a black singer, making black music — hasn’t been lost on Bridges, or the press. “Love — like real — love to people, everyone that supports me,” he says on the phone. “But sometimes that gets to me. Only because, like, as a black man, I want to see more of my people support the music,” he says.
Leon Bridges performs at the Toyota Music Factory in Irving on June 9, 2018.(Lawrence Jenkins / Special Contributor)
Faced with career pressures, both Bridges and Khruangbin have in the past fallen back on the concept of place. When they record their own albums, Khruangbin does so in a barn in Burton, about halfway between Houston and Austin, off Highway 290. Bridges has been vocal in branding himself a Texas artist, even though his music doesn’t quite register as Texana.
“People there are genuine,” Bridges says, speaking of Fort Worth, where he still lives. “I can pull up to a bar and have a conversation with a cat who might not necessarily know who I am,” something, he says, that’s still important to him. On the flip side, he’s proud when his musical peers recognize his roots.
“I remember I had an encounter with Abel, a.k.a. The Weeknd,” says Bridges. “I was at one of my favorite bars in L.A. called Tenants of the Trees. And my friend introduced me to him,” he says. “Oh yeah, what’s up, man? You that kid from, ah, Texas,” he says the singer told him. “And I was like, ‘Well, there we go.’”
Lately, many journalists have stopped applying genre labels to Khruangbin’s music, which is a compliment. For one, it reflects their notoriety: People know them now. It also means their music speaks for itself. The demand for comparison is no longer there. What they do, listeners recognize, is authentic.
Bridges has been boxed in by genre ever since he sang that first “Baby, baby, baby,” on Coming Home, with such impeccable smoothness people thought he was the second coming of Sam Cooke. Though he’s tried — his second album stepped away from soul while still staying grounded in it — he hasn’t quite broken out of that mold yet. Maybe that’s why these sessions were so special to him. For a few days recording in the warehouse, he got a rare chance to just do his thing.
What’s next
“I feel like he’s family now,” Lee says of Bridges. On their next album, Khruangbin plans to add lyrics, a first for the band. It’s something they felt like they could never do, Lee explains. “Nobody wanted to sing, nobody wanted to write words,” she says. Working with Bridges on his own words for the EP gave them the confidence to start writing lyrics on their own. “Apparently I had a lot to say," Lee says. “So I said it.”
Bridges’ next album is set to include at least one of the tunes that didn’t make the EP, he says. He knows not all his listeners will be on board with what he puts out. “I probably alienated some fans with my second album and I probably will alienate more with the third one,” he says. But he sees the switch as something he needs to do for himself. In June, his touring schedule kicks into full swing. In the meantime, he’s doing some one-off shows.
Khruangbin ships off to New Zealand and Australia in April to tour with Tame Impala. “I think I’m at a place — this is me speaking personally, I don’t feel like I need to get any more successful," Lee says. "I’m really happy where I’m at, and with what we’ve accomplished.” It’s an admirable sentiment, but it’s not the trajectory Khruangbin’s on.
