Hear Tounds with Futurebirds at Charleston Music Hall on December 30
The needle drops on “Take It Easy,” the opening track on the Eagles’ self-titled 1972 debut, and Keon Masters asks his Tounds bandmates, “Is there a more American album?”
The band members, gathered in Masters’s living room for taco night, haven’t known their lead singer long, but together, they’ve tapped into a timeless sound. Tounds puts an indie edge atop the breezy ’70s feeling of acts like America, Jackson Browne, and the Eagles. Their debut album, It’s Spelled TOUNDS, departs from the layered pop of Masters’s longtime group, Brave Baby, in favor of acoustic, live band energy. Like The Band’s era backing Bob Dylan, Tounds finds magic in pairing an accomplished songwriter with an established band.
Bassist Tommy Merritt and drummer Drew Lewis are the former rhythm section of Babe Club and two-thirds of the band Hollifield with Tounds guitarist Connor Hollifield. That trio is also the core of The Simplicity, another Charleston group with a notable new album in 2025 (For Sale), and the backing band for songwriter/producer Ryan Bonner and the Dearly Beloved. Bonner plays guitar in Tounds, and keyboardist Paul Chelmis rounds out the sextet. “What’s cool about Tounds is that everybody has their own superpower,” says Hollifield. “We take it seriously, but it all feels fresh and light.”
Tounds formed in early 2025 over card games at City Lights Coffee. Hollifield, Merritt, and Lewis had seen Brave Baby as college students in Columbia a decade ago. Masters mentioned that he had a batch of new, unrecorded songs, and the trio offered to record with him at Bonner’s John’s Island studio, Loserville. Masters shared raw demos and gave the band open rein to develop the songs. “Since Tounds, every time I write, I’m happy with it,” says Masters. “I don’t have to think about the whole thing. I just focus on the message. The theme of It’s Spelled TOUNDS is hope and resilience, written as Masters coped with trauma. On “Other Side of It Now,” he sings about putting those wounds behind him. “Grocery Run” is even more direct: “Garden of ruin, seasons of losing/Nothing’s growing back/When your whole life feels offtrack/Put on a movie that’s gonna make you laugh/Get on the phone with the friends you have/Gossip for hours and remember that you are simply amazing,” he sings, before promising, “I’m here patiently waiting/I will take on what you bring.”
“They’re personal songs,” Masters admits. “I dealt with some demons. Singing these songs helps me shake the monkey off my back.”
But Masters sings from an overhead view of his pain, at peace with the past. The album closes with “Do What You Can When You Can,” a tale of a road trip with his dad to visit his grandfather in Arkansas.
“We didn’t set out for Tounds to sound like a throwback act,” says Masters. “I just wanted us to sound live and honest. But if people want to say we sound like Tom Petty meets Jimmy Buffett meets The Killers, that’s a cool place to be.”
