A horn band that outgrew its own name
Fourteen years of weddings, galas, and backyard anniversaries across Austin and the Texas Hill Country — told honestly, without the press-release gloss.
We started as a taco-money cover band
In the spring of 2012, Theo Marsh and three friends from the UT music school took a standing Thursday happy-hour slot on Red River under the name Fretboard. The pay was tacos and whatever landed in the bucket. It was never a career plan — it was an excuse to play Stevie Wonder loud on a weeknight.
The venues kept writing “FB” on their chalkboard calendars because nobody wanted to spell out the whole thing. By the time a bartender's sister asked us to play her wedding out in Dripping Springs, the short name had already stuck. We have been FB Band ever since — and that first wedding is still the reason we do this.
Why we kept the horns
When bands our size want to make more per gig, the first thing they cut is the horn section. We went the other way. A real trumpet and sax behind a Motown tune is the difference between a crowd that nods along and a crowd that will not sit down. Sofia and Will have been with us nine and seven years respectively, and they are the reason planners keep our number.
We are deliberately a small operation. There is no booking agency skimming the top, no rotating cast of players you have never met showing up on your wedding day. The people in your planning call are the people on the stage. If one of us is ever sick, we call a trusted Austin sub we have played with for years — and we tell you before the event, not after.
How we think about your night
Our whole job is reading a room. A corporate crowd wants dinner to feel effortless and the last hour to feel like a release. A wedding wants the first dance to be exactly right and then eight songs that get grandma and the groomsmen on the floor at the same time. We plan for that in advance, then we adjust in real time, because no two rooms heat up the same way.
Rooted in Austin, on the road through the Hill Country
Home base is a rehearsal room off East 5th. Most of our work is within an hour of it — the downtown hotels, the ranch venues in Driftwood and Dripping Springs, the wineries around Fredericksburg. We will travel farther for the right event; we just quote the drive honestly instead of burying it.