Although the San Francisco, CA-based quartet of City Tribe formed in 2010, they can actually trace their origins back to 2007 when founding members and co-lead vocalists Duncan Nielsen and Jacob Jones were young musicians playing in bands around Santa Barbara, CA. Nielsen and Jones were in a post-hardcore band, with Jones, who hadn’t quite learned to play guitar on vocals, and Nielsen, who hadn’t quite learned how to sing on guitar. However, the band was short-lived. Within about a year of that band’s formation, the members of the band went their separate ways with Jones winding up in San Francisco and Nielsen winding up in Berkley. And as a result, Jones and Nielsen lost tough – that is until a few years later when Nielsen, who wanted to be in San Francisco, wound up living down the street from his old bandmate. 

The duo started writing again but with a stripped down sound and presentation as they employed acoustic guitar and harmonized vocals. Some of their first shows – as a duo – were as part of the Dig Music series, a showcase for local talent that the duo curated. Sometime later, they recruited a Santa Barbara friend Eric Wallace to play bass and Scott Taragon to play bass before recording a self-titled EP. However, there was a lineup change in late 2012, with Cody Rhodes taking over on drums. 

“Wildflower,” is the first single off the San Francisco, CA-basd quartet’s forthcoming debut album Undertow, and it’s a breezy but earnest track comprised of Nielsen and Jones’ effortless harmonizing, a subtle and yet forceful guitar solo and some really inventive percussion that not only seems to owe a debt to Paul Simon, it manages to evoke the endless possibility of the open road, and of California – somehow, I can envision being on the he Pacific Coast Highway with some dear friends and playing this particular song as our theme song.