KT Tunstall's Happy Where She's At
By: Brett Hickman |
Wednesday November 28, 2007 |
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| KT Tunstall's "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" was one of those mega-smashes, crossing radio format borders and getting an even bigger boost thanks to American Idol contestant Katherine McPhee's enthusiastic version of it on the #1 rated TV show. But, even though she's got a new album out (Drastic Fantastic which debuted on the Billboard charts at No. 9), the Scottish pop-rocker isn't dismissing the song that got her famous, even if she has to sing it from now until eternity. "I still really like it. I thought that I would hate it by now." And the singer is keeping busy. Drastic Fantastic's second single, "Saving My Face" is going to radio on December 12th, her holiday CD Sounds of the Season is on sale now exclusively at Target, her "Girl and the Ghost" is included on Starbuck's "New Brits" compilation disc, she'll be performing at the Nobel Peace Prize concert in Oslo, Norway on December 11th and she's gearing up for a North American tour in 2008. Static Multimedia: I heard about your recent comments about Carrie Underwood from American Idol, do you regret letting your song "Black Horses" be used in the earlier seasons of American Idol? KT Tunstall: No, absolutely not. I don't regret it in the slightest. It was a weird one to come my way because I've never been particularly polite about how I feel about reality pop shows, I mean, they're fantastic television; it's very entertaining. But when it comes to the actual kind of the very limited amount of space there is in our culture for new music to get through, it's a real shame when you've got essentially very expensive karaoke acts taking up a lot of the space when there's new and very exciting original artists who are writing their own music and doing something very, very new and unique. And, so, as a writer, I think that's why it kind of wrangled me about the best new artist category because, I mean, I have nothing personal against Carrie Underwood at all, she's a very talented singer, but I was really, really very pleased at the same time to see that the Grammy people had nominated someone like Imogene Heap, who's just a completely free-spirited and very, very talented, original musician. And, it was just basically scary, the best new artist getting up and saying thank you to God and Simon Fuller. It wasn't what I expected to hear when someone got that award. But, I mean, there's no bad blood with it. I mean, she does well and lots of people absolutely love what she does and she's obviously talented. After growing up in what was an academic household, how do your parents feel about your musical success? And then just to go with that, how have you used what you've learned in your previous schooling within your musical journey? KT Tunstall: Well, my parents are very cool with it. As I'm a successful musician. But they were definitely not down with it when I was an unsuccessful, unemployed musician. It was mostly out of worry but also out of the fact that education was a huge thing to them as a physicist and a teacher, that they felt I have this great education and I was potentially just throwing it away, when in fact it led to what I'm doing. I feel like I'm using everything I've learned, which you don't often do. I could easily have ended up with a job that didn't use a lot of what I had learned. But, no, they're cool with it and are spending their retirement at backstage parties at Webster Hall in New York. They find they're enjoying it a lot. And as far as all the stuff growing up, my parents didn't listen to music so, in a way it was a really cool thing because it meant I wasn't like massively influenced by anything, and I didn't have anything to kick against or kind of be influenced by. So I grew up just knowing that I loved playing musical instruments and my parents really encouraged it. I think also the fact that they weren't completely into me being a musician, it is good for you to have something to kick against and have someone to prove to that they're wrong, it definitely got some fire in my belly. Can we expect to see any performances on college campuses across the United States? KT Tunstall: I would absolutely love to do a college tour. I think it would be an amazing thing to do and really rewarding for me and the band. Where we're at at the moment, we've just got to see how this new album does because it's hard times in the music industry. People are not buying a lot of CDs anymore and sales are down by 30% a year, and there isn't a huge budget there when you've got a new album out to get a whole band out to the States and tour. So, really I've got to kind of try and weigh everything up and see what we can do. But I would desperately love to come and do a tour of campuses. That would be a dream. I know that we're going out to Japan and New Zealand and Australia in March, and hopefully doing some stuff in South America as well. We'll definitely be in the States at the beginning of next year, for sure. What's the best and worst thing about being KT Tunstall? KT Tunstall: Well, the best thing about it is not feeling like I just don't have to do a job. I do what I love doing and it's afforded me a life of being a musician and I couldn't ask for more. I love being a nomad. I love living out of a bag. I love meeting people. I feel more at home onstage than I do anywhere else. It's the biggest thrill for me, getting onstage and playing a show and communicating with people I've never met before. It's great. And then the worst thing is…it's a hard question. I'm a pretty positive person, and I'm a die-hard optimist. So the worst thing would probably be regularly having to get up at like fucking four in the morning to get plane flights somewhere, or like, you know, get myself from A to B and then be incredibly nice all day. Life is hardcore. You've accomplished so much so early on in your career, what else is there that you'd still like to accomplish? KT Tunstall: Oh, God, there's loads. I'm 32 now and I think when I hit 30 it just kind of dawned on me that there's so much I want to do and, you know, in your 20's it's very easy to be lost in your own little bubble of what's here and now and then I suddenly went 'wow', there's so many things I'd like to do. I want to learn how to make chandeliers. And I want to travel. I want to do some serious traveling and without being 'KT Tunstall'. I want to go see India and Africa and go and see how other people live and see some amazing places and I'd love to write music for film. I'd love to do like a dance project with big beats. And I'd love to do some painting. I've never really properly learned how to paint and it's always something I've wanted to do. I need to throw some really good parties too. I have some cash now and that's what I reckon is a good way of spending it, just throwing some Freddy Mercury style uber-parties. How would you say that stardom has impacted you? KT Tunstall: I think that the craziest thing about it is you become very self-analytical, which I've never been. And doing interviews you get asked things that you would never ever wonder on your own, of your own accord. Your brain can start to kind of eat itself, you start masticating on your own grey matter and going, 'my God, is that what I really think' and it's really easy to get a bit twisted up about what you said, if you said something and you didn't mean it and it really… I've had to really learn to just kind of let go a little bit and just go well, that's how I felt that day and as long as you're honest about it then you're alright if the next day you turn around and say 'you know what? That's actually not how I feel, that's just how I felt yesterday'. You have to get used to that part of it because it can kind of mash your head up a bit. But on the whole I've just absolutely loved it. I have such a good time, and playing on the stage with the band means everything to me so it's really amazing that that's how I make my living these days. If you were to have a break for 24 hours right now, not necessarily tomorrow, but to do anything you want, go anywhere you want and with anyone that you want… KT Tunstall: Oh, my God! You've just made me very excited. I think I would probably have dinner with my boyfriend on the ocean with my feet in the water, and then I'd…I quite fancy doing the old night dive with sharks. I think I'd have to do a bit of shark night diving. And then wake up late, eat a lot of breakfast, and I'd have to see a movie. I want to see Eastern Promises, the new David Cronenberg film - so I'd watch that during the day. And then I'd probably go and see the Arcade Fire, I think. How has your fan base changed in the last three years, besides just increasing? KT Tunstall: It gets younger. I've noticed that when I first started out it was people kind of, you know, 25-30 upwards. And I've liked gigged and gigged and gigged and I'm noticing that the front row is just getting younger and younger and a lot of younger kids are getting into it. And, like young guys, which I'm quite surprised by, which, you know, 13-14, guys that are really into playing guitar and they really like my pedal and they really like the songs and…but it's strange, you've got these little guys who are kind of dressed in Korn T-shirts and, you know, they've got their baggy pants on and everything. I'm like, 'my God, I'm so flattered, you're into my stuff'. I would have, you know, I would have thought that they would think I was like Phoebe from Friends or something. And they're totally up for the gig. It's wicked. If you had to change one thing about the music industry right now, anything, what would you want it to be? KT Tunstall: Wow, you're stitching me up. Because I can't answer this without flagging off my label. No, they're good. We have a good relationship actually as relationships go with labels, so. It's an imbalanced industry for sure. I think labels and artists just need to go into partnerships together and go 50-50 on everything and try and make it work. Instead of all the ridiculous, huge amounts of money up front and then the label being disappointed that it doesn't work and dropping people. In the '60s and '70s people might find their fruition on their third album, people could afford to have an album that flopped. I'm feeling the impact of it for sure. And it's expensive to bring a British band over to the States, and I've not been able to bring my whole band over this time and it's, you know, I can do it, it's not like it's impossible but I'd prefer to do it that way. Do you have any tips for artists who kind of are yearning for a career like yours? What should they do? KT Tunstall: God, it's hard, because it was such a shock to me. How it worked. I was confident enough that I could get a career out of music and not have to do another job. But I really didn't bargain for all of this. I think my favorite motto of all time is 'Luck is being ready'. When you try for a long time to try and make something happen, you develop a pretty strange relationship with the idea of being lucky because it's like yeah, it's lucky but when you try and do something for 10 years and then it happens it kind of seems less lucky. It's like you were always gunning to try and make something happen. And I think that really the best advice is just to not be afraid of any opportunity that comes your way. Even if that's playing at someone's house party, or getting up on the street and playing or if someone says do you want to come sing on this, don't be afraid and just say yes, even if you don't think you can do it, just say yes. Go and do it, and if it feels right, then go and do it. There's amazing opportunities and I think that there's these secret windows that open in your life and sometimes you see them and sometimes you don't. But if you really open your eyes to them there's a lot more than you think. Why do you feel it's so important for people to buy albums? KT Tunstall: Well, I mean, they don't have to buy physical CDs, they can pay for downloading, but it's very difficult for artists who are signed to record labels to keep making music and keep traveling as a band if there's no income. So it can put someone like me in a really difficult position if record labels aren't making any money from CD sales, because it means that they can't put the money into making my new album, they haven't got the money to put into helping me get my band over here to promote the new record. You wouldn't go into a store and steal a CD, you'd pay for it. You wouldn't just walk out with it. So, it's the same on the Internet, it's just the same thing, it's just stealing. So, it's a way of making sure that the artists that you really like will continue to make music. You know what the record company did? When they got the copies of my album, they copied them and then put them in a sleeve that said Paula Abdul's Greatest Hits. And no one stole it. Yeah, that's the worst that you can do, you've just got to go Barry Manalow Plays the Blues, and no one will steal. Tell me about Global Cool, about the new project with a couple of dozen female artists who are raising awareness for the transmission of HIV to unborn children in Africa. You've got like a million things you're working on. KT Tunstall: Well, I grew up in a beautiful part of Scotland. I was lucky enough to grow up somewhere fantastically attractive to look at. And when that natural landscape is under threat you really, really feel it when you're attached to it. And it's always made sense to me to try and do something about that and my mom was quite strong about not wasting stuff and being as environmentally friendly as you could. And I met a great guy who started Global Cool a few years ago, four or five years ago now. The only thing to do at the moment is do offsets. So I've got about 6,000 trees planted up in Scotland to offset the carbon emissions in making Telescope. And, yes, that's a bigger forest than I expected. And then on this new album I'm putting the money towards investing in third world country green infrastructures, putting money into setting up renewable energy sources rather than coal plants, that kind of thing. And I just greened my apartment in London, which is great. Full of sheep's wool and solar panels and non-toxic paint and sustainable woods. And I use bio-diesel fuel in my busses. And the great thing that I've got going on with the touring I do now it's like an extra dollar on the ticket price, but I carbon-neutralize your journey. Because actually the main carbon output from doing a gig is the thousands of people coming to one place. So, I put some money in to offset your journey, which is cool. When you started listening to music, who were some of your influences? Or who did you really, you know… KT Tunstall: Get off on? …listen to? KT Tunstall: The first stuff I remember listening to I got the Stone Roses album, I got into Ella FitzGerald - someone gave me an Ella Fitzgerald tape and she was certainly the first female singer that really moved me, and I was amazed at her voice. I consider her my singing teacher really because I listened to that tape a lot when I was starting to sing at 15. And then really the two albums that influenced me the most was when I went to college and I bought Blue by Joni Mitchell. And at the same CD sale I bought Bone Machine by Tom Waits and they're just two albums that represent what I'm trying to do. Have you experienced any kind of difference between your American fans versus your fans overseas? KT Tunstall: I have to say - my European fans are going to kill me - I've always found American audiences to be just so uninhibited. And when I first came over here as a teenager and I was doing some open mic nights in bars and that kind of thing, in Britain they'll cross their arms. And then here, if they like you people get up and dance on tables, you know, there's no holds barred. And I've always appreciated that reaction and that support. It's a riot playing for American people, they love it, they love flag music. How have you grown between the release of your first and second albums since so much has happened in the past three years? KT Tunstall: I really wanted to progress on the second album. I wanted to make something that I felt was the next thing. Not just a repeat of the first one. I think it's an easy trap to fall into just because you've got a successful first record that you just do the same again because you think it's going to be successful. I didn't want to do that. A big difference was the fact that I'd been on the road with the band for three years, so that really found its way into the second record...it's got a lot more live energy then the first one. Which is much more fitting. The first one is a much more intimate affair. I definitely scrutinize more than I did when I first started because when you know how many people are waiting to hear what you've done and are into what you're doing, it's like 'Oh my God, there's so many people looking at me'. It can be a little weird and that can kind of do your head in a little bit now and then, so it's definitely a different experience with the second album. So with growing popularity do you feel like you have more or less freedom with your second CD than you did with your first? KT Tunstall: I definitely had a lot more freedom, but it was really freedom through experience rather than freedom from someone not letting me do something. You know the first album I'd pretty much never been in the studio, so I was kind of beholden to the naivete a bit. Whereas on this one I kind of new quite a bit more about what I was doing in the studio and had a better idea of what I wanted it to sound like and where I wanted it to go. Me and Steve Osmond, the producer, were very much left to our own devices to make the album so it was a really creatively liberating experience...it was great. And as for now, the record is out, it's kind of a case of seeing what happens because it depends on how well this record does to see what kind of freedom I have in terms of where I can play and, you what I can afford to do. Talk about your live shows and your love for your head rush foot pedal. KT Tunstall: Yeah, good research. Well done. So the headrest pedal came about because I'd made the first album but no one knew who I was so I couldn't pay a band to come around with me. So I just had to go out on my own. And couldn't face the thought of going out with just a guitar after making this album, it just didn't make sense, I wanted to make more noise, and have more kind of diversity to what I was doing. And I'd seen a couple of people - particularly this Canadian guy called Son of Dave, he's an amazing blues performer, use this pedal, and he doesn't play an instrument, he just plays…and uses a shaker and beat boxes, and then sings blues over the top, it was just fantastic. So I got hold of one and just phoned my technical friend and worked out how to get my voice and my guitar to it and, in a moment of genius in a sweaty rehearsal room on my own, I just thought that, if I bash the hell out of my guitar, surely I've got a drum machine. And that was basically where Black Horse came from was realizing that that actually worked. It's a very cool little gadget. And the reason I still really love using it is because it's so easy to get it wrong. And like I've done the Today Show maybe two or three times now, and they, I don't think anyone understands how hideously wrong that could go live on national American morning television. And it went really wrong the last time. I didn't record my beat. I hadn't pressed the button properly, so when I pressed the button to play it, it played what I'd recorded in the sound check. Live on TV. And thankfully, it, I got away with it, but I mean I could have been like shouting hairy polish builders bum and that could have been repeated on the Today Show. Do you have this nightmare scenario that you wake up to in the morning thinking that some day you're going to be 65 years old singing this one song? KT Tunstall: Well… …like at country fairs? KT Tunstall: Well, this is the thing. That I got asked this question, 'what is your guilty pleasure'. And I have to say that it's actually playing "Black Horse" because I still really like it. I thought that I would hate it by now. But it's because of my leap pedal. It's because it's a constant challenge. Where you, this thing that I use, I just have to leap myself and it can go really wrong and so there's always this kind of burst of excitement that hit hasn't completely arsed up, you know? How do you combat things like exhaustion and repetitiveness? KT Tunstall: Well, there's no antidote for that. It's definitely something I've experienced pretty regularly in these last three years. But it's in between the other end of the spectrum. It's in between total euphoria. And so you just have to accept that it's part of what you do. That you can't have these amazing times free. You know, there's got to be some payback somewhere. And the good thing is that when it comes to different and repetitive stuff, the questions, the interviews or the early mornings and all of that stuff, you see the payback from that so quickly when you play a show and feedback that people have come out and it's sold out. And you've never played there before. And that's just where you did the interviews and where you're just able to work, so you learn that it's a very quick payback for the hard work. But yeah, it's been pretty tough at times I have to say. But it's all very much worth it and it's very difficult to complain about it because I'm doing what I absolutely love and everybody has bad days at the office, you know? What would you say is your favorite city in the world to play in? KT Tunstall: Oh, God, that's really hard. It just feels like I'm bad-mouthing many other when I choose one. I think I'd have to say London, it's my home now and there's a lot to be said for a homecoming gig and playing for the fans who were there right at the beginning making it all happen. And you never, ever forget that they're the people who gave you the leg up and they're the people who really stuck with you when you were in your early days. We just recently played a fantastic venue in London called the Round House and we played three nights consecutively. So we basically played to 10,000 people in London and that just blows my mind to think that I'm able to do this. It's an enormous feeling of fulfillment in my life that I'll never forget. But New York's bloody good as well. There's a lot of good love in knowing that you can play in New York. As a Scottish girl it's like New York! It's the place to be, you know? You've struggled as a musician for a long time before you made it, but now that you've sort of turned the corner to a significant degree, how is your personal life in terms of both your romantic life and friends being impacted by the fact that you're traveling quite a bit and you're now KT. Where have you really had to make the adjustment? KT Tunstall: Well, from my positive and die hard optimist place, my friends are very glad to see my arse out of the door and actually touring rather than trying to persuade them to come to yet another tiny little club gig. So they're all delighted for me and it's their success as well. A lot of my friends are very old friends and they've been there from the beginning and have really supported me through it. And I miss them, but it's kind of like going backpacking for three years or something, they don't expect to see me but we keep in touch. It's hard. I miss my friends. I miss people's weddings, I miss births, I miss birthdays and it's a shame not to be closely involved in some great moments in friends' lives. They get perks, they definitely have perks. And from the romantic side, I'm living the dream, because I go out with a drummer. And he's an amazing drummer. So, instead of him getting you know the pat on the back, I've had people coming up to me and saying he's a great drummer, well done. I'm like hang on a minute, he's meant to be lucky to be with me. But it's been really great, it's worked, you know, I think it's the kind of thing that could be a nightmare, but thankfully we both have our independence, passion for what we do and we're both doing what we want to do. He's ten feet behind me. On the riser. I don't feel like I could be in a relationship if it wasn't one where we were working together because I just wouldn't see anyone. If I was with someone who was home I wouldn't see them. I'm never there. It's worked out very well for me. If you could pick one current artist who you have never toured with before, who would you pick? KT Tunstall: I would love to tour with the Flaming Lips. That would be so wicked. Wayne Coyne is such a massive, live inspiration to me. When I see Flaming Lips concerts I just feel like the guy could stop a war. He just emanates love from every pore and everyone in the audience gets infected with it and it's a complete lovefest. I love that positivity and it feels like such an essential thing to exist in the world and he's so funny and so open and I have met him a couple of times and he just speaks to you exactly the same way that he would speak to a crowd of like 20,000 people. So I really aspire to be Wayne Coyne. |
