About - The Story of Tensas & The Mourners
About the Band
Tensas & The Mourners are a Colorado roots-punk duo welding distortion, trumpet, and raw storytelling into something unmistakably their own. Fronted by Tensas and backed by Desha, the pair deliver high-energy performances that hit hard and ring true.
The Mourners began to take shape in early 2023 when Desha joined Tensas for what was still a solo project under his name. By that fall, the collaboration had grown into something larger, a shared voice and a band with its own pulse. The name Tensas & The Mourners became a way to open the door for others who would join along the way, including musicians like Aloena, who helped shape the sound in its early days.
The duo now hits the stage with rhythm and noise that cut straight to the bone, fusing punk energy with roots-rock storytelling. Fronted by Tensas (vocals, guitar, drums) and backed by Desha (drums, trumpet, piano, bass, vocals), they move like a storm, switching instruments, trading energy, and tearing through sets that feel urgent and electric. Beyond the noise and the lights, Desha keeps the rhythm steady. A multi-instrumentalist, music teacher, nonprofit board member, and mother, she balances fire with grace and brings a presence that turns sound into something human.
Tensas & The Mourners have shared stages with Clyde McGee (Bridge City Sinners), Danbert Nobacon (Chumbawamba), Beans on Toast, and Jeshua Marshall & The Flood (Larry & His Flask), carrying the same relentless, do-it-yourself spirit wherever they go. Whether on a festival stage or packed into a dive bar, their performances are fierce, intentional, and alive with purpose.
Who Is Tensas
Tensas grew up along the Delta, where history hums through the air and the river remembers what people forget. From that current he built a sound, part roots, part rebellion, and all reverence, driven by the need to make music that moves the spirit as much as the body.
The songs of Tensas carry that conviction. They blend punk’s defiance with the storytelling of old-world Americana, driven by raw guitars, pounding rhythm, and a voice that sounds set on fire then dragged through the mud. Baptized in ash and dirt, still burning with truth, his music protests, confesses, and heals all at once. Long before the label or the nonprofit, the songs came first—the foundation for everything he would build later.
The name Tensas comes from the river country where he was raised, drawn from the waterway and the land that echo the name of the Indigenous Taensa people, whose spirit still runs beneath the soil and the sound of the river. It found him in the military, a nickname first spoken by a fellow soldier during training that echoed back to the river he’d left behind, and it stuck in his mind. In time, it became something more: a way to keep the past alive without being chained to it, to carry it forward through every song.
From the poverty and contradictions of the Deep South to the creative pulse of Colorado, Tensas found not escape but evolution, a place where his ghosts could breathe new air and his music could take root. His work still pushes back against the same forces he left behind: silence, conformity, and the cost of indifference.
On stage, the journey comes full circle, and he brings those ghosts with him. The line between man and myth blurs as each song becomes a reckoning and a reminder that the stories we carry are never really left behind, only retold.
Behind the Music
From penning lyrics beside the Tensas River to building a small fair-share label and a music nonprofit in Colorado, he’s been driven by the same compass all along: freedom to make music on his own terms and help others do the same.
Tall Tale Records, founded by Tensas (Derwood J. Willhite), operates as a home for independent musicians who share that vision, a fair-share, non-exclusive label built where creativity, ownership, and ethics stand shoulder to shoulder.
Rocky Mountain Music Society, is a nonprofit organization he also founded, that same energy extends from Colorado outward, advocating for helping give opportunities to aspiring and working musicians wherever the music can reach.
Whether on stage or behind the scenes, Tensas is still writing the same story—one built on roots, rhythm, and the fight to be heard.
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Press & Booking
booking@tensasmusic.com
Electronic Press Kit (EPK)