Pursuing music professionally is a daunting task, but for folk-soul duo Teneia, it’s helped that both members are fully committed to the music—and to each other.
When Muscatine, Iowa, native Ben Eichelberger first met his future wife and band mate, the timing didn’t quite work in their favor. Teneia Sanders-Eichelberger, a native of Jackson and the duo’s namesake, was performing at a wine bar in Phoenix, where she moved after living in Louisville, Ky., from 2005 to 2009. Not only was she seeing someone at the time, but also she already had a backing band. However, before long, the two became friends and eventually began dating and playing music together.
“I always tell people that I snuck in on bass,” Ben says joking, “because we had started dating at that point, so I was like, ‘Hey, you know, bass would sound really good with your trio!’”
After Teneia’s previous group disbanded, she and Ben hired an electric guitarist and a drummer to fill out a four-piece. Unfortunately, it became clear over time that the newest members weren’t as dedicated to where the project was going.
Ben says: “We were like, ‘We want you with us from the start. Can you commit before we have anything big here?’ It was just that conflict of what comes first—the chicken or the egg. Do you hire players after you’ve made a name for yourself, or do you have people who say, ‘OK, I’m with you’?”
While they originally intended for duo performances to be a temporary fix, Teneia says they realized that the music still sounded full and interesting. Their latest album, “No Fakes,” which they released in November 2015, marks several new points in their career, as their first record as husband and wife, which they announced through a video for the song “Rest of My Life” in December 2014, and first record as a permanent duo.
