It all started early fall 2009, Tony Lucca & Jay Nash co-headlined a tour which featured Matt Duke as support. Early in the tour, the three recognized that they had great musical chemistry with their three part harmony and different, yet complementary approaches to guitar. On a day off, 09/09/09, to be exact Lucca, Nash and Duke recorded four songs in an impromptu session at SPACE in Evanston, IL
. Upon hearing those recordings, management and Rykodisc almost immediately put a plan together to release them as a four song EP. Two months later, the TFDI EP was released and quickly rose to number 1 on the iTunes Singer/Songwriter chart and stayed there for weeks. That EP has sold nearly 30,000 digital copies to date. Tony Lucca, Jay Nash and Matt Duke joined forces again in 2010 for a national tour that was largely sold out, and wrote and recorded the TFDI full length When I Stop Running. That tour schedule was cut short by Tony Lucca's success on The Voice. In 2016, TFDI played together again for the first time in five years and decided that they needed to record more music together. Beggars & Ballers is TFDI's first release in nearly six years. A Note From TFDI:
We find ourselves in a precarious moment for our country and our place in history. There is a lot of noise, plenty of division and truth often gets lost in the chaos. As songwriters and individuals, just as with politics and social progress, lone voices are often drowned out by the fray. We don't think that it is a coincidence that time and fate brought TFDI back together after a five year hiatus, at this particular time and place. As much as each of us enjoy the freedom and catharsis of our individual musical endeavors, there is something undeniably powerful and resonant that happens when we pool our efforts, energy and talent. We uncover something more...something bigger than ourselves. When we got together in December, we all found ourselves individually reflecting on this dismal, downward spiral that was the 2016 election cycle. No matter what side you were on, it was not a pretty thing to behold. Each of us sought that catharsis that can only be found in music. Our musical reflections on the times each had their own respective personalities. Songs like Anymore and Make Sense of it All don't require much of a magnifying glass to see how they relate to the news cycle, while Moving On, Surrender and Maybe I Should Go use the metaphor of a hobbled relationships to parallel political dysfunction and potential resolution. We chose to cover Bob Dylan's 'My Back Pages', not only because it is such an incredible and timeless piece of music and poetry, but because it feels so perfectly relevant to the 'here and now' to each of us. At the end of the day, we cannot help but recognize that we get so much further in this world, when we seek harmony. While don't care what side you're on, but we hope these songs help you find the truth.
