Texas Tea

TEXAS TEA – Album Review

Take A Sip (Mere Noise/MGM)

This impressively strong debut album from local duo Texas Tea (Kate Jacobson and Ben Dougherty) eschews the pair’s rock pedigree in favour of a note-perfect take on the timeless and authentic side of country music.

The pair share both songwriting and vocal duties with aplomb; Jacobson’s voice is ideal in this setting and is reminiscent of artistes like Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris on beautiful tunes like ‘Macy And Me’, ‘Words Escape Me’ and ‘Whiskey And Wine’.
Dougherty’s tunes like ‘Caroline’ and ‘The Daredevil’s Lament’ are just as strong, but are more solemn in tone and suggestive of acts like Leonard Cohen or Giant Sand.

Throughout the album the duo sing over understated and classic- sounding instrumentation that they provide themselves (with a little help from some Gin Club friends on a handful of tracks). A couple of classy covers round out proceedings (namely Hank Williams’ ‘I’m So Lonesome (I Could Cry)’ and Willie Nelson’s ‘Face Of A Fighter’) but it’s the original compositions that make this such an excellent first- up offering.
4/5

Steve Bell – Time Off
- Time Off Magazine

Take A Sip (Mere Noise/MGM)

Brisbane two-piece Texas Tea stake a major claim on the roots scene with this lowkey, heartfelt collection of lonely, sorrow-filled country tunes. Multi-instrumentalists and dual vocalists Kate Jacobson and Benjamin P. Dougherty (Vegas Kings) bring a variety of skills to the table, with Jacobson’s voice especially standing out, full both of strength and frailty and brimming with unrepressed emotion. Their original songs have an authentic hillbilly feel, closer to the growing alt-country scene (without riding it’s coattails) than the big-hat-and-spurs pap that the term country conjures up. They also cover Hank Williams and Willie Nelson tunes to show they know where the heart of true country lies.

BLUNT Magazine
- BLUNT Magazine

THE HANDSOME FAMILY, TEXAS TEA (live review)

The Zoo: 18.02.07
TEXAS TEA are in luck - there’s tables and chairs down the front tonight for this eerie, skewed country gig so the crowd don’t hide up the back for the support act.

Kate and Ben move calmly through songs about love, drink, mortal melodrama, and leaving places you don’t want to leave but really should. The true testament of their worth - they have organised someone to play the saw. This gives everything another dimension; Texas Tea need even more saw.

When Kate sings ‘So Lonesome I Could Cry’ her voice sticks a knife in the sky so hard it nearly rains. Ben’s voice is like a warm blanket you’d wrap gun parts up in.

Carmen Keates – Rave Magazine
- RAVE Magazine

The Troubadour: 07.10.06


In a past life, Kate Jacobsen led a band of renegade prairie housewives on a month-long killing spree across four states. Then she settled down to perfect her own brand of 90 per cent whiskey. Ben Dougherty (from The Vegas Kings and The Standing Eight Counts) was there too, lining up empty bottles on a fence for Kate to send to heaven as glitter with a 12-gauge. And so, tonight, two centuries on, this is Texas Tea’s launch of their album Take a Sip. They do ‘Caroline’, ‘Macy and Me’; they do ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’, which, so much more than a cover, presents like the essential germ of the whole undertaking. Kate’s voice could suspend a scalpel in mid-air.
Chairs collapse, birds explode, etcetera. Ben’s guitar and slide is the bed on which the cowboys collapse after Kate’s king-hits.

CARMEN KEATES – Rave Magazine

- RAVE MAgazine

The Troubadour: 13.07.07

First up is male/female duo Texas Tea. Nonchalantly they sit side-by-side at the front of the stage, with Kate Jacobson on acoustic guitar and tambourine and Ben Dougherty, in turn, tastefully adding lap steel, dobro, harmonica, and kick drum. Throughout their set of alluring country gems there’s an over-riding sense of heartfelt sincerity, not least of which comes when the pair trade lead vocals on set highlight ‘The Daredevil’s Lament’. After a brief cover of Ray Charles’ ‘I Got A Woman’, Texas Tea close with the wonderful ‘Whiskey And Wine’.

JUSTIN GREY – Time Off
- Time Off Magazine

The Troubadour: 23.06.06

Now with all lounge chairs occupied, Kate Jacobson and Ben Dougherty (also of The Vegas Kings and The Standing 8 Counts) are greeted with warm and beguiled expectation, and from Kate's first line: "If you're feeling salty then I'm your tequila," the small audience is magnetised by her unassuming, out-at-the-washing-line cheek. And look at Ben - no shoes and so concentrated on his slide guitar. They've got a star-gazing air to them, an Americana-trumping, lawnmower-ignoring pensiveness.

CARMEN KEATES – Rave Magazine

- RAVE MAGAZINE

The Troubadour: 22/06/2007
I was suitably chilled by now, and after slipping to the bar for another beer – they weren’t serving hot chocolate – I parked myself in an almost prostrate position in one of the Troubadour’s inviting armchairs. Texas Tea, another local act, are Kate Jacobson and Benjamin P. Dougherty, and are a folk / country act with the emphasis on country. Both artists took on multiple musical roles, utilising vocal, guitar, tambourine, harmonica and piano etc to flesh out some very accomplished song writing. Influences ranged from Johnny Cash on the foot tapping Macy And Me to Neil Young in restrained, acoustic mode on the lovely Whiskey and Wine.
Author: Crazyhaze – Faster Louder Magazine
- Faster Louder

TEXAS TEA
The Junkship Rcordings
(Plus One Records / SHOCK)
Texas Tea's 2006 debut Take A Sip was the sound of the Brisbane duo tentatively finding their sound and while it was an excellent introduction to their authentic style of country and roots (and a great album in it's own right), in hindsight it only hinted at the brilliance displayed throughout their scintillating follow up The Junkship Recordings.
Darker in tone than it's predecessor and utilizing a great array of instrumentation to add texture and atmospherics to their stripped-back sound, the real strength of the album lies (once again) in the strength of song writing offered by both Kate Jacobson and Ben Dougherty. From the opening knell of 'Cane Farmers Song' Jacobson's beautiful, dulcet voice cuts a swathe through the album, in turns seductive (the sultry 'Kiss Me Gently'), contemplative (the tender 'Autumn' which builds to a beautiful trumpet-driven crescendo) and playful (the relatively jaunty but insidiously catchy 'Billy'). Dougherty is also in fine vocal form, combining beautifully with Jacobson on the perfectly morbid 'The Ferry Song' and the aching 'Down to the Shore', but really coming into his own on the closing track 'Winter', which sounds for all the world like a long-lost Bill Callahan track. Elsewhere Jacobson throws in a beautiful piano led rendition of The Triffids 'Raining Pleasure', that band a perfect touchstone for Texas Tea who are also offering a distinctly Australian take on a style usually dominated by overseas artists.
Overall, The Junkship Recordings is a beautiful, subtle album that rewards both paying of close attention and repeated listens, the benchmark of any great album. These songs will ingrain themselves in your physce and if there's any justice in the world Texas Tea will soon be embedding themselves in the public consciousness in a very similar manner. Breathtaking.
4 and a half stars
Time Off Album of the week.
3rd December
- Time Off Magazine

TEXAS TEA
The Junkship Recordings
(Plus One/Shock)
9/10

Within the first moments of ‘The Junkship Recordings’, you’re hit with this voice: a voice that’s sad, desperate, with many a burden upon its invisible shoulders. ‘Cane Farmer’s Song’ is a captivating opening to Brisbane duo Texas Tea’s latest effort. The two-piece, consisting of Kate Jacobson and Benjamin Dougherty, have seemingly equal shares in songwriting, singing and instruments. The interplay between vocals in ‘The Ferry Song’ and ‘Down to the Shore’ is superbly done, with both voices seeming a perfect fit for each other. With both Jacobson and Dougherty providing vocals, the album seems to be kept fresh and interesting. ‘Autumn’ is a highlight, clocking in at almost seven minutes and finishing dramatically with a beautiful horn arrangement, and ‘Billy’, despite its upbeat tempo, is devastating at its core. Each song is so different to the next, but still manages to encompass exactly what Texas Tea are. This album shows the duo off as fantastic songwriters, not only lyrically, but the fact that they can continuously musically reinvent themselves within different styles of music and using different instrumentation (Bianca Martin). - Tsunami Magazine