On an improbably sunny Monday evening, City Tribe is seated in a semi-circle at a high-top table in Elite Café on Fillmore, knocking back a round of amber ales. Well, all except guitarist and singer Jacob Jones: He’s on his way, in what turns out to be an exhausting cab ride. Even with only three present, it’s already a challenge to tell them apart: so much facial hair.
As they settle in, drummer Cody Rhodes is chatting excitedly about two things: Café Elite’s art-deco ambiance, which he comments on a couple times, and the drummer that’s sitting down to his set at the front of the house, about to set the mood with a small jazz trio. They’re an enthusiastic bunch—surprisingly animated; disarmingly silly for a band that’s become known for mellow, acoustic-driven rock that almost always is described by beach metaphors. But now, just a few weeks shy of the release of their first full-length, Undertow, their ebullient nature as a band is starting to come to the surface. “Starting a writing process as a full band, immediately it’s going to have more rock to it,” says Rhodes. READ MORE…