Temptress – Ride Of Their Lives

By Nicholas Jason Lopez

On Jan. 16, 2019, four friends in Texas got together for an afternoon jam session. That night, they each went to bed, all part of a new band.

Within five months, the experienced Dallas-Fort Worth foursome wrote and recorded three songs and fully embraced their “Temptress” moniker. Over their short time together, they’ve performed with acts such as Heavy Temple, Stonecutters, Backwoods Payback and Royal Thunder.

Temptress is Kelsey Wilson (Lead Guitar/Vocals), Andi Cuba (Drums/Vocals), Erica Pipes (Rhythm Guitar/Vocals) and Christian Wright (Bass/Vocals).

“We basically wanted to get a few tracks out there and get some feedback and see what people thought about it in general,” Wright said. “We’re all seasoned musicians. We’ve all played in other projects and we’re just trying to take a different approach to it this time and instead of spending a year and putting everything out, we would just want to trickle a little bit out and see if the people dig it before we dive right in.”

Their first three original songs were on their self-titled debut EP released on Jun. 7, 2019, fully written, performed and produced by the group. It was recorded at Aqualab Sound Recordings in Dallas by Josh White and mastered by Frank Heath at Workshed Engineering in Birmingham, Ala.. They released video singles for all three tracks, “Hot Rails,” “Ride Of Your Life” and “Heavy Woman.”

“‘Hot Rails’ is definitely like, ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s gonna be okay, just keep going,'” said Wilson. “With ‘Heavy Woman,’ it’s all about having a significant other, that you’re hoping that it’s gonna come and if it does, then ‘let’s do it’ and having fun with it,” said Wilson. “Have fun on the journey. It’s not really about the beginning or the very end. It’s about [the] run through it. It’s about the story, I guess. ‘Ride Of Your Life’ is totally about sex, so yeah, it’s just about literally having the ‘ride of your life.'”

As for life in Dallas-Fort Worth, Wright noted that although the neighborhood has become gentrified since he moved there approximately four years ago, it has come with a price. The Curtain Club, a popular Deep Ellum concert spot for 30 years, closed its doors this past summer.

“It’s kind of going through the typical ‘urban renewal’ thing and a lot of young professionals are moving in,” Wright said. “They cleaned up the neighborhood and it’s good and bad. I want to support local business and I get it, but not at the heart district. I’m not going down to Deep Ellum to buy candles and t-shirts. You go down there to drink beer, eat tacos and watch rock bands. That’s the way it is.”

Still, despite The Curtain Club’s closure, one can still hit up multiple venues in a night. Wilson expressed how supportive their hometown scene has been overall.

“It’s amazing from all different sides and then since it’s Dallas, you get out-of-towners and Texas is so big, you can get people from the rural areas that will come into Dallas for a local show because they know that it’s a great band,” Wilson said. “Also, there’s always a local opener on some of the big tours that come through and they’re super sweet to us.”

One of Wilson’s goals as a musician is to get people into the groove and was pleasantly surprised that Temptress’ music did just that at shows.

“It was actually really crazy to me because I played in metal bands before and heavy hard rock punk bands and no one dances to your music and I saw that the first two rows of people were dancing and it blew my heart up a little bit,” said Wilson. “I love seeing people dance.”

Recently, the band shared their last run of 2019 U.S. tour dates and have completed the writing process of new material. They’ve headed into the studio to record it between touring weeks, with plans to eventually release those songs as their debut full-length album by early 2020.

“We all work together to make the best song possible,” said Wilson. “We want to have great songs. Everybody has a small formula of what a good song is and where it’s really easy to put it together and being able to talk to them in ‘musician speak’ is wonderful as well. It’s probably the most hard-working band I’ve been in in a [long] while. Just trying to actually make things happen.”