Who is TENTS?
We are a family band based in Portland, Oregon. My name is Brian Hall. I sing, write, and produce. My wife Amy sings and occasionally co-writes with me as well. We have three kids and live in Portland, Oregon. We are most known for the song Defender, which is the theme music for The Bible Project podcast. Jon Collins from The Bible Project is a dear old friend and ongoing collaborator. We put out our first two records with Badman Recording Co, and continue to release music independently.
Christopher Hall is TENTS fam OG of OG’s. He plays guitar and has helped produce many of the songs we’ve released over the years. He also owns Push Pull Coffee in Portland and Seattle. Joe Greenetz, Emma Mansanti, Adam Souza and Sebastian Rogers are all regular contributors to what we do.
My background is in making music for motion picture. I still love making soundtracks. Many of the song ideas that make it on TENTS records find their seed form on our YouTube channel, where I get my jollies sketching out song ideas as theme music for our Vlogs. My vlogs are patient, reflective memoirs about family, heartbreak, God, and Joy.
Here’s an example of one I made about my relationship with my father:
Sometimes when you write a song, or have a child, or move to a new city, you don’t fully understand what it will become, what it will mean to you, and how it will shape your life. This was the case when we named our band. We thought it was a kind of random name, and didn’t really understand what type of meaning or significance it might have.
As the years passed, and we logged more and more songs, we began to see shape in our music. We are parents, we are christians that have spent many a night in the proverbial wilderness. We write from this place. Tents, whether they symbolize holy places or homes for vagrants (or both), we feel they are a useful allegory for our music.
The practice of making music for me is a practice of solitude and prayer. While it does not always resemble this exact structure, let me give you a picture of my favorite way to write music. I go on frustratingly long walks and wait in stillness. I look for empty space and I burrow down into it. I wait and wait and wait until my ambition is gone, and God can move freely through the recesses of my broken heart. Slowly ambition and anxiety dissipate. This frustratingly patient practice thoroughly obliterates my impatience. In this practice I hear and see the world differently. Once the quietness is full, and the canvas is blank, I begin to make songs.
In their origins, these songs are the byproducts of prayer, but they become monuments. Singing our songs, for us, is an opportunity to re-encounter these old stories, old truths, and old joys.
When I was a kid, my mother used to fumble her way through old hymns on the digital piano on the living room. I remember so vividly begging her to keep playing. It felt like magic when she played. The whole room would glow, and I would feel peace. At some point I think my heart grabbed on to the idea that through music, I could hope to “re-enchant” the lived experience of my community through these notes and melodies. This really is our mission statement. We are here to re-enchant your world.
You can stream our music on Apple Music, Spotify, and Bandcamp. You can also find our content on YouTube channel, on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
WITH ALL THAT SAID, we should tell you, we do have an arms length relationship with all of those platforms. Our mailing list is our inner sanctum, and we make quite a bit of content that is exclusively for that space. We regularly reach out to our mailing list with early releases, early merch drops, exclusive video content, and who knows what other schemes we will hatch.
If you really resonate with what we do, there’s a form to fill out below that will get you opted in. If you think it sucks, you can opt out any time :)
Big love,
Brian, Amy, and the TENTS fam.
