Thomas Csorba has announced the May 22 release of his new album Tender Country via the newly-launched Turtlebox Records. His third studio album, Tender Country, is country music uninterested in posturing, guided instead by tenderness, humor, and an acceptance of impermanence. That mentality comes across acutely in his new single, "The Big Time," a gorgeous country ballad that poignantly illustrates the hardships of a life on the road and the family milestones you can miss along the way.
Watch the "The Big Time" music video
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Csorba on the new single: "This song is the most honest song on the record. It’s a song that sits right there on the edge of the cliff of giving up. I figured there’s no other way to start but by addressing the elephant in the room. How does someone who values his stable home life and family reconcile that with his life as a travelling musician?"
Born in Houston, Texas and now rooted in Dallas, Thomas Csorba writes country music that feels less like performance and more like witness. His work belongs to the long lineage of Texas songwriters who understand that restraint can carry more weight than spectacle, and that the quietest lines are often the ones that speak the loudest. Where Csorba’s songwriting once felt bound up in identity and ambition, it now exists alongside fatherhood and marriage with its value sharpened by the fact that it must be protected, chosen, and earned.
That shift is on full display in Tender Country. Self-produced and recorded in a matter of days with trusted collaborators, the album eases away from the chase and instead finds the courage to document life as it is being lived.The songs on Tender Country are deeply invested in the emotional architecture of family life. Marriage, routine, fatigue, joy, and discovery are all treated with equal seriousness. In Csorba’s hands, washing dishes and falling in love again become similar acts of quiet devotion.
Tender Country follows Csorba's 2024 release Windchimes, which Americana Highways called a "near perfect modern Americana album," and his 2020 self-titled debut, which American Songwriter said "captures the sound of a man whose voice far outweighs his years on Earth." He has garnered additional attention from Rolling Stone, The Bluegrass Situation, and his hometown paper Houston Chronicle, who begged the question "Is Houston native Thomas Csorba the next great Texas songwriter?" Csorba has taken his intimate performances to major festival stages including ACL Fest, Luck Reunion, and AmericanaFest, and he has supported everyone from Rodney Crowell and John Moreland to Amanda Shires, Yola and Courtney Marie Andrews.
The new album also finds Csorba partnering with lifelong friends in their new endeavor, Turtlebox Records, which is distributed by Missing Piece Records. In his early teens, Csorba apprenticed as a knife maker with his friend and mentor, Jonathan Mckenzie, who was then a budding entrepreneur. Mckenzie went on to found the rugged, outdoor speaker company Turtlebox Audio, which has remained committed to building a meaningful relationship with musicians. With a vision for deepening that relationship, the company is launching a new record label and bringing the story full circle with Tender Country as their flagship release. In Csorba’s words “It’s an honor and pleasure to walk into this new season shoulder to shoulder with a group of people who I respect so deeply.”