Alaina Moore gets into how she fell for Patrick Riley, her husband, co-sailor and Tennis (the band) partner.

We first met… In Analytic Philosophy class. I was one of two girls in a class of thirty. He walked in late and sat beside me. I don’t think the odds will ever again be so much in my favor.

We fell in love over… Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam. Patrick had somehow obtained a leaked copy (which was a feat all those years ago). He burned it for me the first day we met. I went home, listened to it all night and fell in love with him just a little bit.

Our songs are inspired by… Lived experiences; some shared, others intensely private.

Song that changed our lives… Baby It’s You by The Shirelles changed our lives. We were sitting in a bar, a long way from home, when the song started to play. We had both heard it before, so maybe it was fate, but we both heard the song differently in that moment. The unpolished drums, the farfisa solo mixed just a bit too loudly, the earnestness of the vocal performances — I was moved by each element. I looked at Patrick saying, “We need to do this,” and he needed no convincing. That was the inception of our band.

Guilty pleasure album or song… I believe in the idea of guilty pleasures in some instances (like, maybe drugs or alcohol) but not when it comes to music. I resist the idea that one should experience guilt in one’s happiness because it has been observed and judged by another. There is no way to objectively evaluate sound waves. If a song makes me happy I refuse to feel self-conscious about it. I just turn it up!

Young & Old means… A personal transistion from passing wide-eyed through opportunities to actively shaping our own experiences. A sophomore record can represent a lot of things, but for us it was about learning to assert ourselves. Nothing wild; a small but firm step.

Someday, we hope to sail to… The South Pacific. I’ve never been anywhere tropical, and I want my first glimpse to be from my own sailboat after an ocean crossing.

When we’re sailing, we listen to… The water and the wind. They are our subtle cues, and the one instance in our life where we prefer silence. However, when we miss sailing, we listen to Paul Simon (Graceland), Grandaddy (Sumday) and Al Stewart (Year of The Cat).

When we’re on the boat, we play… We are usually too busy to play a game on the boat. It’s a miniature self-contained universe full of delights and demands. When we do have downtime, we usually read or go for a swim.

…And we drink… Maybe just a bit too much? There is a sailing tradition called the Sundowning G&T (it’s pretty much the same thing as happy hour), and we rarely skip a day. After a voyage of any length, we really feel like we’ve earned it.