Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley, a married couple that started their musical project Tennis 15 years ago writing songs on a sailboat, have just released what they’re calling their final record, Face Down In The Garden. They’ve also embarked on their final tour, which stops in Nashville June 7.
I caught up with Moore and Riley just after their set at the Kilby Block Party festival in Salt Lake City in May. Still buzzing about the crowd response during their afternoon show, the pair was no less descriptive about the downsides to continuing to create in the current indie music economy. They finished one another’s sentences, maybe unsurprising because the pair also shares a cell phone. Overall, both Moore and Riley radiated gratitude for the experiences, but seemed very at peace with the decision to wrap up this chapter of their lives. They’ve commemorated the occasion by going all the way back to the start and issuing an EP of previously unheard bits called Neutral Poetry: First Recordings, Unreleased Demos (2009-2010).
Hear the full conversation with the core two creatives who make music as Tennis right here and on your preferred source for streaming WNXP Podcasts. Below are segments of the interview edited for length and clarity.
On the final tour, now underway
Celia Gregory: Is this emotional yet? How are you feeling?
Patrick Riley: Yeah, I mean, I think the first show [the night prior in Las Vegas] was just hectic and we were just figuring out what the hell we were doing again. We haven’t toured in, it’s been a year and a half or two, I guess
Alaina Moore: Yeah and we’ve got some new crew and a new band member and so I think we were in just like “get the show on” mode and then afterwards I ended up talking to some fans during loadout and they were crying and then it really hit me and then I was crying. I was just like crying with these really sweet strangers being like, I know it is the end of an era and so it is bittersweet but we are also just — we feel so fulfilled and so grateful for everything Tennis has given us. We never knew it would last this long or take us to all of these places and give us all these experiences. And we’re also really excited for the next chapter of our lives, too.
The final record, Face Down In The Garden
CG: Did you know when you were creating this batch of songs, “OK, this is the end,” or was it once that it was on record, you’re like, “This is a really nice end cap”? What came first?
PR: We actually thought we were gonna take a long break after [2023 release] Pollen, but then Alaina wrote the lyrics to “12 Blown Tires,” and then I think we ended up working on that song a little bit when we came home. We were like, “Oh crap, we have one more album in us.” But it’s been an uphill battle ever since, honestly, like [second album released in 2012] Young & Old, I feel like every album after that, it has been like —
AM: It has taken 150%. It’s like everything we have to make the album, get the tour going. It feels like just being like wrung out over and over even though it is the most amazing, most rewarding [thing]. We love it so much but, yeah, when we started writing Face Down In The Garden, we knew immediately we felt ready. I don’t even think we would have done another album but the songs just were there. And we were like, “We have to honor these songs.” Especially the first songs that we had written were “12 Blown Tires” and “At The Wedding” and we loved them so much we’re like, “They deserve a record, we’re gonna write a whole album to fit these songs and that will be our last.”
PR: We’re just not the people who, like, write songs on a whim or something. Every song takes, at this point, almost a year or something to write. It’s just a really, really strenuous process — a million revisions and a lot of introspection and it’s quite painful. I think a lot of people think songwriting could be like, “Oh, it’s just two people in a room, like they’re just having a good time.” It’s a lot of work.
AM: Yeah, we’re usually two people in a room going, “Why, God, why won’t this song work?”
PR: I know. Just write the guitar solo already.
AM: But it’s so worth it, when we’re done we’re so proud of it. And today was really special, too, playing Kilby [Block Party] was awesome. So we’re just really grateful. I feel so thankful for everything and this is a really beautiful way to say goodbye to Tennis. These songs really served as a reflection on our career, how we started and where we are now…I feel like I did a lot of looking backward on this record.
PR: I think the other thing we were trying to do, too, is just kind of put songs that we felt like we didn’t have together… like these are all songs where the arrangements are, at least to us, very unique and don’t we don’t have other songs that fit into these little boxes. So, yeah, I feel like it was a nice way to be like, “OK, now the catalog is complete.”
Creativity and serenity in sailing
CG: You’re landlocked in Colorado. But the advent of Tennis and the creative fuel is being on the water, is it not? Can you speak to that? It sounds like you plan to do more of that just and kind of rest a little bit.
PR: I mean it was my childhood dream to buy a boat and sail around the world. I’m one of those very stubborn people who put money in a bank for many, many years, like starting from childhood. I met Alaina and she joined me on our first little trip together. But ever since we started writing music on the water, it’s just become our creative sanctuary of some sort. And we’ve just been a lot more prolific there.
AM: What draws me to the water, though, it’s not really about the ocean. One thing that I love about it is the forever sky that feels like the plains. ‘Cause Colorado, it’s like prairie, you know, you can see forever. So in that way it feels homey. And then I also am most connected actually to the boat. The boat feels like a very powerful sense of home because of form and function. Like its design needs to achieve multiple goals so in order to live on the boat you have to make a bunch of accommodations to be there. You have very few belongings, my wardrobe simplifies down to about four things.
PR: I think that and also the big deal is we don’t have internet when we’re on the boat. I think there’s something about disconnecting fully that allows you to tap into creativity in a way that’s not so…you’re not really basing it off of what’s happening in the world.
AM: Yeah, and I always want to tell people it’s not so much about the boat. It’s about finding a place that lets you strip away technology, all of your ambient social pressures, and for us that’s the boat, but it could have been anything. It could have been a cabin. It could have been an RV. It can have been just camping. It’s not so much about sailing, although we have come to love sailing, but it’s more about what the lifestyle…the conditions of it puts us in the right head space to be creative.
CG: And then you go home and obsess over every song for weeks and months.
AM: Yes, exactly. And it’s a really jarring and profound juxtaposition, the two lifestyles, like the remoteness and the isolation of sailing and then being thrown into the world. It is very forward, like public-facing, whereas sailing is very introverted, introspective. It feels very much like a yin-yang situation. It has been really special and I think now we’re ready to move out of the chaos.
Why they’re happy to be done, what they’ll miss
CG: Could you give me a little like pros-cons list of what you will be pretty relieved to leave behind and what you think you know yourselves enough to know you’re going to miss?
PR: When we started music, we started in the DIY scene in Denver, we didn’t even have social media. We didn’t have merch. All we did was have like seven inches [7″ records] and we just like drove around and played shows.
AM: We literally just played music.
PR: Yeah, and sold music, nothing else. And we actually made a pretty comfortable living. It wasn’t great, but it was enough to get by.
AM: Very tight living, but it worked. It was awesome.
PR: But yeah, I think now we’ve noticed like obviously things have changed since then and you don’t really make money off your music anymore. So you’ve had to turn into like a little bit of a Walmart.
AM: You have to become like a…
PR: Media company…
AM: …a conglomerate. It’s like a vertically-integrated conglomeration. We have to be a merch store brand. We’ve got to be content creators. You have to be extremely active on social media which, again, not to knock social media. It’s really special for some people and it has definitely given us things. But for Pat and I, our personalities, it’s just not the way we want to be.
PR: Yeah, I mean, we share a cell phone, and that’s intentional. We just really are scared of it influencing me.
AM: Yeah, we won’t miss having to, basically, it’s mostly administrative work. We feel like 90% of our time is just like nothing to do with music.
PR: “Does this little snippet of the video work on my Spotify page? Oops, it’s the wrong video.”
AM: Yeah.
PR: And because we self-release and we self do all the tasks, it ends up being quite a bit.
AM: I will say I think it’s really hard for a mid-level, working-class indie band to make it anymore. I feel like, honestly, the middle class of music is kind of bottoming out and you’re either a very small struggling artist or else a very huge, very funded artist. And I feel it’s just really hard to have that mid-tier.
PR: So that’s the negative thing that we won’t miss. But what we will miss is like a show like this today.
AM: I know, I told Pat that when we walked off stage, I was like, “I’ll miss this, this is amazing.”
PR: We didn’t have any technical difficulties, the crowd was amazing and I thought we played great. When there’s a connection on stage and you feel like you’re firing on all cylinders, it really is a special feeling.
AM: I feel like we have a true connection with our fans where they actually understand us as human beings and really, really resonate with our music and that is the most incredible feeling in the world.
PR: And then the next thing, too, is like when you write a song and you hear it back for the first time and it it feels bigger than you. It feels like something you didn’t make because, it’s like, I don’t have the capability.
AM: How did I even make that? Where did it come from?
PR: Producing something like that is the most special feeling, too.
AM: I’ll miss that, too. That’s amazing.
