Bio

A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing is Tenci’s second album, following their 2020 debut My Heart Is An Open Field, which introduced Jess Shoman’s musical explorations to the world. 

Shoman admits that their first album dealt with letting go of painful life experiences, resulting in emptiness. In this more recent collection Tenci carries an opposite feeling, a celebration of self-rejuvenation. A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing shows Shoman steering their inventive music further and wilder, spilling over 12 fable-like songs. In a combination of milk, coins, glass, water, and light, each song forms a spell to “fill my heart back up,” Shoman says, “by reframing complex feelings by turning my head sideways and seeing them in a different way.”  

On the album Shoman is joined by collaborators from the close-knit Chicago scene: Curtis Oren on saxophone and guitar, Izzy Reidy on bass (Izzy True), and Joseph Farago on drums (Joey Nebulous). The years following My Heart is an Open Field saw the band playing shows together all over the country, alongside acts Friendship, Hop Along, Squirrel Flower, and Wednesday.