KT
Tunstall
KT
Tunstall is a sparkling new songwriter
with Chinese blood, a Scottish heart, great
legwarmers and a cool name – “well,
it’s got a bit more attitude than
Kate which just says farmer’s daughter
to me,” she laughs. KT celebrates
classic singer-songwriting in the tradition
of Rikki Lee Jones, Carol King and Fleetwood
Mac with an articulate, accessible, immediate
brew of rootsy sass, wistful quandary and
after-hours atmosphere. The latest in a
line of outstanding contemporary Scottish
songwriters including Texas, Fran Healy,
Teenage Fanclub and The Beta Band, KT’s
unique perspective offers a rare emotionally
connecting intensity through it’s
gripping lyrical bite and heartfelt melody.
She grew up in the university town of
St Andrew’s (“beautiful but
sheltered, a little bubble”), always
knowing she had been adopted at birth. “I
grew up knowing I could have had a million
different lives. It makes your life mysterious
and your imagination go wild.”
Her debut album ‘Eye To The Telescope’ is
the creative consequence of that inquiring
imagination. “My songs examine and
explore little specific emotions or situations
or stories,” she explains. “They’re
kitchen table songs, like a conversation
between me and one other person. It’s
almost like an alien has been sent to get
emotional samples from human beings and
put it all together on a record.”
KT spent her childhood up hills and under
canvas with her outward-bound parents.
Music was never really part of the equation
until her older brother discovered the
joys of hair metal. “I would sit
outside his room and record his music through
his door.”
Her first album was the Never-ending Story
soundtrack, but her favourite, reassuringly,
is David Bowie’s ‘Hunky Dory’. “Its
sound really touched my love for songwriting
and spacey stuff,” she says. “I
was really into sci-fi books as a kid.
My dad is a physicist and he used to take
my brothers and I into his lab when we
were little. We played games with liquid
nitrogen and Van de Graaff generators.
He had the keys to the observatory at St
Andrew’s University and he’d
get us up in the middle of the night to
show us Halley’s Comet. That’s
partly why the album is called ‘Eye
To The Telescope.’”
The young active KT took up piano, then
flute and gradually her singing voice developed
its earthy individuality, “I’m
pretty certain that I learned how to sing
because someone gave me an Ella Fitzgerald
tape - she was my singing teacher.”
By her mid-teens, KT had started writing
her own songs, “but I was just coming
out with this schmaltzy love nonsense.
It was a complete vomit of puppy love.
But I thought I was rocking.” At
16, she took up the guitar, teaching herself
from a busker’s book. Schmaltz was
junked; a musical epiphany ensued.
Hungry for experiences and independence,
she gained a scholarship to Kent School
in Conneticutt, New England and absorbed
gigs by The Grateful Dead and 10,000 Maniacs.
She also formed her first band, The Happy
Campers, and played a host of informal
gigs. “By the second week of playing
an open mic slot I was their ‘special
guest from Scotland!’,” she
recalls.
Next stop on her personal odyssey was
a music course at Royal Holloway College,
where she tried and failed to form another
band. “I managed to win Battle Of
The Bands with one mandolin player! It
was me and eleven goth bands and I won.”
After vanquishing the goths, KT returned
to St Andrews and became immersed in the
grassroots scene which spawned The Beta
Band and the Fence Collective, forming
a group with Fence’s Pip Dylan and
honing her tastes with an ambrosial diet
of James Brown, Lou Reed, Billie Holliday,
Johnny Cash and PJ Harvey.
A few years and bands later, it was crunch
time for Tunstall. She hit London again
where, finally, things started to fall
into place. Working relationships were
forged, deals were secured. She began writing
projects with Swedish songwriter/producer
Martin Terefe and London-based Orcadian
Jimmy Hogarth and London’s Tommy
D. With over a hundred songs in her pocket,
set to work on her debut album with her
new band and legendary U2/New Order/Happy
Mondays producer Steve Osborne at the helm.
“Steve was producer and engineer
- he did everything. He even invited me
to stay with him and his family so we could
work longer. We recorded the album in this
gnarly little studio in the woods in Wiltshire.
It was this disabled guy’s house.
The vocal booth was the wheelchair ramp
between his bedroom and the control room.
So you could either sing going downhill
or uphill. It was perfect, so raw. He’s
got this little shack in the garden where
all the local bands rehearse. It was like
Deliverance.”
Minus the psychopathic locals, presumably.
And no duelling banjos either. “I
didn’t want to take too much equipment
into the studio because it’s when
you have to be inventive that you get interesting
music. Tom Waits said if you want something
to sound like a cardboard box being hit
with a boot, then hit a cardboard box with
a boot.”
This lo-fi, visceral, boot-wielding approach
was inspired by KT’s recent conversion
to the hiss and crackle of early blues. “On
the whole, I’m a positive, skippity-la-la
person but I love the dark side of music
and I will always want to explore that.
It’s a positive-sounding album but
there’s stuff underneath for sure.”
Since completing ‘Eye To The Telescope’,
life has been a blur of gigs, first as
support to Joss Stone, then a tour of Europe,
singing with ‘klezmer hip-hop’ band
Oi Va Voi, who ignited the Avalon Stage
at Glastonbury.
“It was blazing sunshine and I went
on in a turquoise neck muff, glamorous
dress and muddy boots and just had the
best gig, really emotional. I’ve
had emails from people saying that they
cried. They promised it wasn’t the
drugs.”
Now KT is raring to channel all her infectious
energies into her own music. “I’m
not exactly sure what has driven me so
hard,” she says. “I’ve
never questioned it. I’ve never had
a back-up plan. I was never going to do
anything else.”
Get the album here.
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