...While on the road doing what they do, Tetlow found time to write the majority of her recently-released solo album From A Seed Of Sand, her eighth release. “I’d written one of the songs before I joined, but the rest were done on the road, over the last year or so,” she explains. “We’re in that bus so much, there’s plenty of down time.”

Often working quietly while the rest of the band slept, Tetlow said she’d retreat to the rear of the bus to have a bit of privacy and solitude. “I’d strum and play kinda quietly and then the songs would come from that.”

The exceptional album retains the hushed tone of early morning conversations and late night confessions, offering simmering and intense vignettes from her fertile imagination. It’s not as blatantly loud and edgy as some of her previous work credited to STB (and yes, that stands for Sonia Tetlow Band). “It’s like that line Bono sang on Joshua Tree: ‘Talk without speaking/ Cry without weeping/ Scream without raising your voice.’ That’s what I was trying to do.”

And she succeeded, making a perfect bookend for the raging rock of STB’s remarkable Spit, yet losing none of the immediacy of her incendiary solo performances. “When I go on the road, I have Spit and the new one with me, “ she says, “If you are interested in me as an artist, it’s good to have both sides because both are me. When I do a solo show, if you’re just expecting mellow, you’re going to be disappointed. And if you’re just expecting edgy, then you’re also gonna be disappointed.”

The mellow but anxious Sand balances the raucous nature of the Cowboy Mouth shows. “We’re playing balls-to-the-wall rock ‘n roll, so I was getting that out of my system every night. Then there was this whole other exploration in the bus...”
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