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"When I dream, I dream of you," sings Royston Langdon on "Cool Water," from the batch of songs written by his new band, The Tender Trio, which includes guitarist Rogers Stevens and highly touted singer-turned-drummer Rene Lopez. "And if I die/I die for you." After experiencing various degrees of success with their previous bands, most notably Spacehog and Blind Melon, Langdon, Stevens and Lopez have embarked on a musical adventure, which has taken them from their respective birthplaces of Leeds U.K., Mississippi and New York only to place them together in a van, starting all over again, wiser, more experienced and better musicians. "Although I had a fairly torturous end to my last band, I realized I really didn't like being on my own," says Langdon about Spacehog, which released three albums of well-received glam-inspired alternative rock ('96's Resident Alien on Sire, '98's The Chinese Album for Elektra and 2001's The Hogyssey on Artemis) before dissolving shortly thereafter. "Bouncing ideas off other people has always been something I'd enjoyed doing." Enter Rogers Stevens, lead guitarist for Blind Melon. The group's self-titled 1992 Capitol Records debut, with its hit single, "No Rain," reached ..3 on the Billboard Hot 100, selling more than 4 million in the U.S. and garnering the band a pair of Grammy nods, including Best New Artist. After the 1995 follow-up, Soup, singer Shannon Hoon succumbed to his demons later that year, dying of a drug overdose at the age of 28, which effectively ended the band. Royston and Rogers were introduced by a mutual friend in 2003. "It was serendipitous," marvels Royston. "And it's been downhill ever since." "It was the first time any of us had played in a trio, so it took some getting used to," says Rene, who took up drums for the group after singing for a variety of bands in the New York area, including a group with Rogers. "It meshed right away because we're all confident musicians." Langdon's religious imagery and ability to find the sacred in the mundane and the transcendence in the everyday raises The Tender Trio's melody-laden, sometimes surreal art-rock to cosmic proportions. When he pleads, "I want to wake up, wake up besides you," in the hyper-romantic "Wake Up," you can't help but feel that appeal personally. "I always feel like such an ass talking about what my songs mean," admits Royston. "I'd like to think of myself as a 'glass half full' type of person. I definitely try to be optimistic. But in this day and age, it's a constant struggle to know what to believe. To try to figure that out makes me want to play music. It's hard for me to isolate a single meaning. I try not to. Whenever I get too obvious or literal, it's not as interesting to me. There's something more fascinating about tapping the subconscious." "I don't think we thought consciously about our influences," says Rogers. "We all play a certain way, but it took an amount of time to figure that out. Roy's sensibility is different from where I or Rene come from, but we all heard the same things growing up." "That's the thing about being in a band as opposed to being a solo artist," nods Royston. "There's a bit of chaos going on in the midst of everything, but in the end, that's the beauty of it." And now that The Tender Trio has produced a number of new songs, they have been taking their act on the road to refine and improve it. "When you play in front of people, you find out quickly what works and what doesn't. It feels really good to be able to go out and, at last, have the same sort of relationship with the guys I'm playing with that I've had in the past," says Rogers. "It's been a long time since I've felt that way, and, for awhile, I thought I'd never experience that again. It's like starting over. " For three guys who've been through the major label roller coaster, The Tender Trio is a chance to get it right. "Three guys who work equally hard together and share the same goals," echoes Rene, " I feel we're just skimming the surface as to our ultimate potential."
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