It’s not often a new album makes me tear up a little, but by the time I got to “So Far from Alone,” the penultimate track of Tipps & Obermiller’s Little Kid Heart, I found myself deep enough in my feelings to blur my vision a little. I was driving, listening to the LP on CD, and by the end of the closer, “This Is Not Enough,” I thought I might have to pull over and have a real-ass cry. It’s not that these songs are so sad that they shattered my carefully constructed emotional scaffolding. It’s that the sad ones are buoyed with so much hope, warmth, and wry humor from the other ones that it was just, I dunno, a nice, emotionally cathartic experience.
Little Kid Heart is the third album from the wife-and-husband songwriting duo, whose folky blend of Americana and roots-flavored pop-rock offers a sincere salve for troubled souls, but before the couple married and became Tipps & Obermiller, they were the local musicians named Hilary and Steve, who met in the early 2000s at a weekly singalong/jam sesh/house party in the Fairmount-neighborhood home of friend Kim Hesk. At the time, Tipps had moved back to Fort Worth after a stint living the singer-songwriter life in Los Angeles, moving there at age 23 after a few years playing music in Fort Worth and releasing an album of her own material, Pink Adobe. As for Obermiller, he played in a cover band while in college in Lubbock, after which he got into the offset print industry, got married, and had kids, living what he called “a stereotypical life.” When his first marriage ended, his post-divorce journey led him back to the guitar. “I decided to start taking writing seriously, as well as performing, like getting up at an open-mic, just figuring out how to get on a stage, and I did that for a while. In the meantime, I met Hilary, and [our music] just sort of came together.”
Tipps and Obermiller got married in 2012 and continued to jam out with their friends until Hesk moved later that year and the get-togethers became less frequent. By 2018, Obermiller was still jonesing to play more guitar, so Tipps encouraged him to start another band. “So, some friends and I had a rock and roll band called Uberduber for a couple of years and released a couple of EPs,” Obermiller said. “We had a good time, just a bunch of, you know, old dudes with families, rocking out.”
The 2020 pandemic put the band on pause until the beginning of 2022, and it ended for good when Joe Ward, Obermiller’s best friend and Uberduber’s guitarist, died from COVID in 2022. Yet as sad as Ward’s death was for him, Obermiller took it as a sign.
“I was doing a contract job in Wichita Falls when Joe died, and I was like, ‘Oh, well, shoot. I’m gonna start playing music again now.’ … So, that was sort of the spark for me and Hilary to get together and start writing and playing, you know?”
Both had written their own songs, and filling out their existing material with new tunes led to their first album in 2023 and a follow-up a year later. Uberduber drummer Trey Ware lent his considerable chops to both records, and their studio band was filled out by a couple of local luminaries: guitarist Matt Tedder and Miranda Lambert bassist Aiden Bubeck.
Tipps and Obermiller are always pushing themselves as songwriters, and for their third album, they wanted to try something they’d skipped on the first two: using a producer.
“So, we took our time with this one,” Obermiller said. “We played the songs for a year and did lots of rewrites. There’s some very delicate subject matter, so we had to get it right.”
Tipps & Obermiller hired Taylor Tatsch (Maren Morris, Cut Throat Finches), recording a song at a time over a period of six months at his AudioStyles studio in Dripping Springs.
Aside from Tipps’ and Obermiller’s contributions on vocals, acoustic guitars, and mandolin, Tatsch played all the other instruments, as well as handling the production and engineering.
“The attention to detail that he gave our songs was really incredible,” Obermiller said. “He can really play. It was really fun to watch.”
The material on Little Kid Heart deserves that kind of production. Tipps and Obermiller have assiduously studied their favorite records to understand why certain melodies and arrangements carry the heft that they do, all to write genuinely thoughtful songs. Obermiller cites the Jayhawks as a big influence, and Tipps draws from both Sarah McLachlan and the Indigo Girls, but she said that her vocals have been influenced by jazz and blues, as well as her youth in the Texas Girls Choir. While their melodies bring to mind Jim Croce and Paul Simon, their lyrics carry the sincerity of a couple of people who’ve endured the ups and downs that come at a person by middle age. From the joys found in making your partner a key to your apartment (“Apartment 303”) and accepting that the world is still worth it despite its many faults (“Garden”) to the possibilities that lie in redemption (“Dance When You’re Broken”) and how nothing, not even memories, can fill the void left of a dearly departed loved one (“This Is Not Enough”), Little Kid Heart will make you feel seen.
Though the album is available on the streamers, Tipps & Obermiller will release Little Kid Heart officially in CD form at a show on Sunday, July 19, at Southside Preservation Hall.
“We like to do an early Sunday, so more people can come,” Obermiller said. “We have a food truck, so that people can come have dinner and be here.”
I remarked that as a burgeoning old person, I appreciated the early start time. The fiftysomething Obermiller laughed. “It’s gonna be table seating, so people can bring their food in and eat.”
Tipps’ friend and fellow singer-songwriter Lisa Renee Smith will open the show. Along with Ware and Bubeck, Tipps & Obermiller will include Morris Holdhal on guitar and Molly Danel on keys and flute. Then, on July 30, T&O will take their show on the road for a run of performances in Colorado. They belong to the Folk International Alliance, which has helped them network with a lot of other similar artists and tour fairly regularly — Tipps is an anesthesia nurse, and Obermiller serves on Southside Preservation Hall’s board, so their work schedules allow them to carve out time to hit the road. But even if they never played outside their living room, the couple would undoubtedly still sing and write together: “We just love songs!”
Tipps & Obermiller
4pm Sun, Jul 19, at Southside Preservation Hall, 1519 Lipscomb St, Fort Worth. $22.79. 817-929-2800.
