Exclusive Premiere: Tanbark, ‘Write Soon’

Alt-country trio Tanbark originated as a songwriting collaboration between Chloe Nelson, a student in London at the time, and James Jannicelli, a Minneapolis-based musician. It’s fitting, then, that a band born out of a transatlantic creative partnership will soon release a debut effort that takes its namesake from a similarly long-distance correspondence.

Tanbark -- who have since relocated New York City and added bassist Chris Kissel to their ranks -- will do just that when they issue Write Soon on Aug. 20, and today (July 28), Diffuser is pleased to premiere the forthcoming album’s title-track -- take it for a spin in the audio player below:

According to Nelson -- who’s a vocal ringer for contemporaries like Lydia Loveless and predecessors like Loretta Lynn -- “Write Soon” was inspired by a letter written by her grandmother.

“My mother sent me a box of letters to London,” Nelson tells Diffuser. “They were old letters of my late grandma Betty’s, from the days when she would run around northern California and postcards cost 1 cent. I wrote ‘Write Soon’ to touch on the long since meaningless inside jokes of this postcard, loves that fade and the anonymity of signing a postcard, ‘Write soon. Love, Me.’”

Jannicelli notes the nature of the song’s inspiration is even reflected in Nelson’s cadence. “I love the way Chloe sings this song,” he says. “It’s an upbeat song, but the kind of lazy, lilting way she sings the verses sounds to me like the rhythm of somebody writing a letter.”

Tanbark will celebrate Write Soon’s arrival with a show at the Manhattan Inn in Brooklyn on the day of the album’s release. You can grab all the details on that gig -- and Tanbark's new album -- at their official website.