The Wind + The Wave

WHO: Austin, Texas-based duo The Wind and The Wave are Dwight Baker and Patricia Lynn. (Dwight is "The Wind" and Patty is "The Wave.") The two met in 2009 when Dwight, a touring musician turned songwriter and producer, who's worked with such artists as Bob Schneider and Brandi Carlile, was urged by his wife to actually leave his studio ("I'm kind of a hermit," he says) and go see a friend's band. Patty's previous band was opening the show.

"I hate complimenting her," Dwight jokes, "but Patty was pretty captivating to watch."

"I thought he was intimidating," Patty says with a laugh about her first impression of Dwight. "A few weeks later we went out with a group of people for sushi and I remember not saying much."

"She was mousy and shy and quiet."

"Not anymore. Now I burp in meetings."

"Yeah, now you can't shut up," Dwight says. "I created a monster."

"Dwight is like my other half," Patty says. "He eats what I don't in the trail mix and vice versa. Cashews are the best."

"Cashews are disgusting." Dwight says. "Yeah, it's really adorable to watch us every morning eating oatmeal together on the road. We're like 90-year-old women gossiping about shit, and her going, 'Can I have your nuts?'"

Declaring Patty's voice the best thing about her band, Dwight expressed an interest in working her, which led to his producing several of her projects. A creative partnership was born. The two describe themselves as being "cut from the same thread" and "rarely on different pages."

HOW: "I was checked out from the band I was in and was also coming out of a three-year relationship," Patty says of her mindset when she and Dwight began writing together. "Dwight said it was the right time to have a completely clean slate and just do what I actually wanted to do in life."

In 2012, the two started a writing group with a bunch of friends ("an idea we ripped off directly from Bob Schneider, to give credit where it's due," Dwight says), churning out a song a week for six months, including their upcoming album's jaunty opener "My Mama Said Be Careful Where You Lay Your Head," "From The Wreckage Build A Home," and "When That Fever Takes A Hold On You."

"It was just, 'Let's get really high, drink lots of whiskey, and write for the fuck of it," Dwight says. "That's how it all started."

WHAT: Later this year, The Wind and The Wave will release their debut album "From The Wreckage," a title that Dwight says partially reflects "building a new thing from the ashes of our careers." The album glows with a rootsy golden tone that encompasses everything from indie-folk, to alt-country to blues-rock to Southern psychedelia. The raucous first single "With Your Two Hands" sounds it could have been written during an impromptu back-porch jam session.

"On a musical level, I was looking for energy and pop and aggression. Not pop as in pop radio, but pop as in thunder. I wanted to feel power," says Dwight, who was raised on a steady diet of Chubby Checker, The Beach Boys, and George Jones before discovering punk rock and British Invasion bands as a kid growing up in Houston. "That's why we'll do a dreamy guitar thing with a country acoustic and then a blues slide guitar with Beach Boys harmonies. It's just an amalgam of everything I heard as a kid."

The album was created in complete collaboration. "Dwight would start on the track, I would leave the room and start writing the lyrics, then I'd sing them the next day," Patty recalls. "He played all the drums and most of the guitars, as well as piano, mandolin, and glockenspiel." The album was written and recorded at Dwight's Matchbox Studios in Austin in two and a half weeks.

"The songs were born of gut feelings and Patty writing about whatever came out," Dwight says. "These are all her stories."

"We would start the day drinking coffee and having a conversation," Patty says. "It was like a therapy session for me. We would talk about everything: the relationship I was in at the time, then a new relationship, and my family, because I have kind of a fucked-up family. We both do. Whatever we were talking about would end up in the song we wrote that day."

"The songs are so honest because of those discussions, that's for sure," Dwight says.

Her desire to tell her story is palpable on songs like "Raising Hands Raising Hell Raise 'Em High," where Patty, who was raised in San Antonio by a Catholic mother and Christian father, sings about her and siblings rebelling against their conservative upbringing. ("I remember playing a rap album in the car one time and the second my dad heard a curse word, he threw the CD out the window like a Frisbee," she says.)

"Patty got real personal on 'Raise Hands,'" Dwight says. "To the point where she questioned, 'Have I gone too far? Am I being a bad family member by presenting this much of the family?"

"Then I decided 'No,' and wrote the rest of the record," she says.

"To me, the theme of the album is summed up in the song 'Every Other Sunday Morning,'" Dwight says. "For Patty, growing up and going to church, it was first Sunday was Catholic, second Sunday was Church of Christ, third Sunday was Catholic, fourth Sunday was Church of Christ. She got conflicting messages, and was told, as a young girl, that both were correct. That is the crux of Patty, too. There's always this internal conflict, the same one that comes through in that song, where she's trying to be the good daughter but also trying to be herself. For me the album is about finding your place, but also being real with yourself, and that happiness is achievable if you're honest."

"I love that," Patty says. "My upbringing is all over the record, so for me it's 'Remember where you came from, but also create your own way.' It's about asking questions and not just being what you are because of where you're from or what you're taught, but coming to know yourself in your own way."