Photo courtesy Marcus Tenney
In fifth grade music class, Marcus Tenney was asked to choose an instrument. It’s a day he remembers vividly. “I wanted to play saxophone, but they said, ‘There’s too many saxophone players, you have to pick another instrument.’ So I picked trumpet.”
That fork in the road is now a laughable afterthought, as he’s one-fifth of the Concord Jazz-signed Richmond ensemble Butcher Brown, contributing, yes, trumpet, but also saxophone and wordplay-rich rapping that he showcases in releases attributed to his Tennishu alias. The previous Tennishu album, “2021,” released in August, was self-produced. His latest, entitled “Three Sides,” is proof that he’s just as adept at working with others.
“If you’ve got the right chemistry with the people that you’re recording with, it’s not a recording session,” says Tenney, 36, “it’s a party.”
In that sense, co-producer Scott Lane, who heads up the Subflora label, could be considered host of “Three Sides,” which was released in November. Studio hangouts spread out across three years have yielded expertly layered beats, memorable hooks and verses marked by determination.
“[We] keep finding a way to make it work,” Tenney says of his partnership with Lane. “Both of our lives changed so much since we started making this record, [and] that continued commitment shows up in everything that we both do.”
The high-energy single “Just Enough” is typical of their lightning-in-a-bottle approach. The song was built around a snippet of Tenney drumming (he plays those, too), then boosted by bass from Butcher Brown bandmate DJ Harrison and vocals from Subflora labelmate Kenneka Cook.
Out-of-the-box thinking is at the center of another relationship key to “Three Sides.” Richmond rapper Chance Fischer guests on two of the seven songs, including the hard-hitting opener, “Runnin Out,” and “Payback,” on which the versatility of Fischer’s delivery shines.
“That [is the] type of artist you can make lots of different vibes with and you can put in a situation, and they’re going to make something that’s probably not what you’re thinking, but it’s going to be cool, which is the perfect person to collab with,” Tenney says.
Tenney's own openness is evident, as well. In fact, the album’s second single, “Ngoni,” wouldn’t exist without it. The song grew around a repeating riff whose timbre was selected from a virtual bank of samples of West African instruments Lane and Tenney were flipping through one day.
“We randomly came across the ngoni,” Lane says, “and he played it, and he cranked out that part real fast on a MIDI controller on a keyboard.”
“It just kind of flowed from front to back like a book," Tenney says, "and having the static [ngoni] sound in the back gives it the depth, and that depth is what I wrote the lyrics based off of. So it all connects.”
That sense of cohesion is no small feat, especially amid sporadically scheduled sessions that formed, in Lane’s words, “a total Frankenstein operation.” Nevertheless, “Three Sides” hangs together as the most complete statement yet from an artist whose total musicianship keeps curation and collaboration in balance.
“I like to let the feel of things dictate what’s going on,” Tenney says, “but that dictation is based on understanding how the whole system works.”
