A Collaboration between Goodnight, Texas and Rainbow Girls.
Avi from Goodnight, Texas says:
"When I met Erin Chapin from Rainbow Girls about 7 years ago I very quickly knew I wanted to sing with her. Over the subsequent mid to late 2010s, we would text each other voice memo covers - and on a couple of occasions sang them together at their band-hosted open mic nights at their house.
Late last year, I challenged myself to write a duet after falling into a big 60s and 70s country rabbit hole. Writing a duet was something I had never done before, and immediately I hoped it would fit Erin. I texted it to her in a voice memo and was elated that not only she, but her bandmates were into the idea. It became Tough.
We shot the video with director Corey Powers in two very different parts to capture the distance described in the lyrics and the difficulty of maintaining relationships while being a touring musician, something Erin and I and our respective partners know very well.”
Erin Chapin from Rainbow Girls says:
"When Avi first sent me the song, he prefaced it by saying something like: “It’s a song about two people in a relationship and one of them is on the road, but in this story the girl is the one always leaving the guy at home.” And I was like, “that’s not a spin - that is my reality. Let’s do this.”
Both of our bands are always on the road, so when it came to recording the song and shooting the accompanying music video, it was rather apt how “tough” it was to make it work. We couldn’t get everyone in both bands to be in the same place at the same time, so we hatched this idea to mirror the song by keeping the two characters separate and splitting the video in two contrasting halves. You see GNTX outside, in the daytime, playing music in a field - and then Rainbow Girls inside, at night, in a hotel room post-show. We wanted to show the non-glamorous part of touring that people usually don’t see: the motel room, the doomscrolling, the loneliness.
Avi and I connected pretty immediately over our mutual love of songwriting and adoration of each other’s music. We tossed around the idea of starting a band or making an album, potentially with the voice memos we were sending back and forth, but one of us is always on the road. Took us 5-6 years to get 1 song. Lord help us if we ever try to start band together."
lyrics
Exin’ off the days till you’re home
I stare at the calendar
when I'm all alone
And I knew it'd be tough
But I thought I'd be tougher than this
Exin' off the days I’m still gone
A day, week or month,
babe it always feels long
Yeah I knew it'd be tough
But I thought we'd be tougher than this
And the ups and the downs
can be so tough to predict
Tappin’ the trees for their sap
Put it on pancakes and the dog gets the scraps
Yeah It’s some kind of breakfast
But it’s better when you're here with us
The Hotel room could not connect
(Well I’m sure you forgot)
Yeah, last night I got wrecked
And It’s a tough kind of morning
It’d be better if you’d answer the phone
You don't know how hard it is to be home
And you don't know how hard it is to be gone
We could meet in the middle but the middle’s too far in between
The ups and the downs are so hard to predict
The world on each side can be hard to depict
The easiest thing for us both is to care more or less
And I knew it’d be tough
But I thought we’d be tougher than this
Yeah I knew it’d be tough
But I thought we’d be tougher than this
Exin' off the days I’m still gone
Exin' off the days till you're home
credits
released August 10, 2023
Lead Vocals: Avi Vinocur, Erin Chapin
Backing Vocals: Caitlin Gowdey, Vanessa Wilbourn, Patrick Dyer Wolf
Drums: Scott Padden
Bass: Chris Sugiura
Rhythm Guitars: Avi Vinocur
Lead Guitar: Patrick Dyer Wolf
Pedal Steel: Adam Nash
Recorded by Goodnight, Texas
Mixed by Jay Pellicci at Brothers Chinese Recording in Oakland, CA
Mastered by Amy Dragon in Portland, OR
Cover Photo by Brittany Powers
Cover Design by Dani Saputo
Video and Color by Corey Powers
Directed by Corey Powers
Cinematography Corey Powers, Brittany Powers
Goodnight, Texas is the garage roots Appalachian collaboration of San Francisco’s Avi Vinocur (formerly of The Stone Foxes)
and North Carolina’s Patrick Dyer Wolf.
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