Terra Bella
Members: Joe Costa and Martina Costa
Hometowns: Visalia, Calif. (Joe), Wonder Valley, Calif. (Martina)
Lives: Nashville
EP: Road to Forever
Single: “You’ve Got That Somethin’”
Twitter: @TerraBellaMusic
Instagram: @TerraBellaMusic
You might not think of California as a country music epicenter . . . or MySpace as a place to start a band, but that’s where and how rising country duo Terra Bella—comprised of husband and wife Joe and Martina Costa—began their musical journey together. Now the duo has made its way to Nashville and to country radio with their first single, “You’ve Got That Somethin’.” They’ve also found their way onto some pretty big stages, opening up for fellow country stars like Blake Shelton, Eric Church, Thomas Rhett, Brett Eldredge, Montgomery Gentry and Lee Brice. They released their debut EP, Road to Forever, in 2016.
Boots in the Roots
Martina: “In my family we have big country music fans. I grew up listening to vinyl records with my daddy, singing along to car jams with my mama and listening to the Grand Ole Opry and old western tunes with my grandparents.”
Joe: “My dad plays guitar and sings, my aunt is a middle school band director that can play just about any instrument and is an incredible singer. I also have great-grandparents that played traditional Portuguese music and I would guess there were musicians going back even further.”
California Dreamin’
Martina: “I was raised in a ranching community where we did everything on horseback, so early on I latched onto cowboy songs and songs about rural living because I felt like they were songs about me and my life.”
Joe: “I’m the son of a farmer so I’ve always related to country music. Being from Central California also helped shape my musical taste because it’s home of the Bakersfield Sound. Merle Haggard and Buck Owens are legends everywhere, but it’s a whole different level over there. ‘Mama Tried’ is the reason I started singing.”
MySpace, Your Space
Martina: “I was a competitive karaoke singer wanting to take my career to the next level, so I went to social media and found a Top 8 mutual friend [Joe] who had his own band in a neighboring town. He looked sexy in a cowboy hat and I wanted free guitar lessons . . . eight years later we are still together and very happily married for five.”
Just Write “Somethin’”
Joe: “Our producer [Johnny Garcia] set us up a writing session with a great writer named Josh Dunne. This was the first time we ever met so at first we were all a little quiet and awkward. We started throwing around ideas and Martina had a note in her phone that said ‘you’ve got that somethin’.’ I had a guitar groove that I had been messing with and we decided to run with it. Josh came up with the really cool rhythmic verse melody and we starting tossing around lines about two people noticing each other. The song is basically a fun, flirty pickup line.”
Watch the debut of the new video for “You’ve Got That Somethin’.”
On the Road Again
Joe: “We are really excited to get back on road to play for our fans.”
Martina: “We love what we do and we are so blessed to be able to do it together.”
