Dante Schwebel has always been prolific. First gaining national attention with the San Antonio band Hacienda, and later Spanish Gold, Schwebel moved to Nashville from Texas in the 2000’s to play guitar for Dan Auerbach, and City & Colour, all the while continuing to write and record his own songs.
In the past couple years those songs have incorporated more and more of the sounds of Schwebel’s youth in Laredo, TX: Conjunto, Norteño, and Romantica Music blended with grooves that come from R&B, Soul and Rock and Roll.
When Dante began kicking around the idea of bringing those sounds into a new project with longtime friend Andrew Trube from the Austin band Greyhounds, he suggested finding another artist who understood the sound. They’d been seeing and hearing a player named David Jimenez around town. Jimenez, like Schwebel, grew up in the Rio Grande Valley in Harlingen, TX. He was known around Austin for his deft Blues guitar playing and soulful voice.
The minute Jimenez heard what Schwebel was doing, he was hooked. “I’d been on a similar journey,” he says. “I’d begun playing with Carrie Rodriguez in her Laboritorio project (which explores Latinx music influences in American music), and been collaborating with some of the guys in (GRAMMY-winning ensemble) Grupo Fantasma.”
That chemistry extended into their music. “From the top, it sounded like we’d been singing together for 10 years,” says Schwebel.
The two began arranging the songs to incorporate this new idea: updated Border Music, or as they like to call it: ‘Tejano Soul.’