Sentimental Family Band - Sweethearts Only (2024) Hi-Res

It’s been a while since Austin has been known as an exclusive country music town, but that certainly doesn’t mean the music has vanished. It’s too ingrained in the dirt and fabric of Texas life, and in every generation, it seems to bubble back up like oil from the ground.

Camille Lewis, Kyle Albrecht and Matthew Shepherd are the songwriters and backbone of the Sentimental Family Band, a fixture of the Austin scene since 2019. Augmented by various lead players, they’ve filled the dance floors at the Sagebrush and White Horse, and more recently, Thursday nights at Sam’s Town Point, with their takes on country classics. Slowly, their originals began to creep into the set. Last summer, they released the single “Face To A Name”, and their full-length debut, Sweethearts Only, drops on March 29th.

“It was sort of a gradual getting back into country music for me. I was raised on it. I think Kyle and I, we met when we were really young, and we got really into experimental music, electronic music. We’re in some bands making that type of stuff and toured around. Then we both really fell in love with being hired guns and playing and other people’s bands. We felt that was making us better musicians. And, Matthew was kind of in the same boat. He played with Dana, he recorded on a Molly Burch album a while ago, he has played with and recorded with and toured with a lot of great bands from the Austin area. We all have wide-ranging musical tastes, and have all kind of just gone through different phases of different types of music that we want to make. But it was sort of fortuitous timing that I think we all really got interested and wanted to learn some country songs together.”