Singer-songwriter KT Tunstall looks back before charging ahead with a solo tour
Blame it on “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree,” then “Suddenly I See” — these are songs that made KT Tunstall the pop star she never wanted to be.
Recorded live on England’s “Later with … Jules Holland” with the Scottish singer-songwriter singing, playing guitar, tambourine and a loop pedal, “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” triggered Tunstall’s 2005 nomination for the Mercury Prize, England’s highest musical award, and was named Track of the Year by Q magazine.
With “Suddenly I See” heading up the U.K. and U.S. charts, and “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” earning a Grammy nomination, Tunstall’s debut album “Eye of the Telescope” became a global smash by selling more than 2 million albums.
“I’m just a terrible pop star,” Tunstall said during a recent phone interview. “I’m a pretty good indie musician, but I’m really not built to be a pop star. Pop meaning popular. Maybe the difference is in the desire, the thing that gets you up in the morning wanting to do it. Mine was never fame and making money. Mine was playing and making stuff.”
“Then I have this wildly successful album that pushes me into being a pop star,” she continued. “I’m eternally grateful for it. It gave me an amazing adventure. But it wasn’t me.”
Nearly two decades after those songs launched her career, Tunstall is heading out on a solo West Coast Tour in support of her latest, more indie-rock record, “Nut.” She’ll be hitting the Belly Up in Solana Beach on Wednesday, June 7; The Troubadour in West Hollywood on Saturday, June 10; Pappy & Harriet’s in Pioneertown on Sunday, June 18; and she’ll be back in the area to play with Frank Tuner at House of Blues Anaheim on Thursday, Sept. 21.
OVERCOMING POP STARDOM
The grind of touring, playing the same songs night after night in venues that all look the same and never getting a chance to experience the places where she would play took its toll on Tunstall, and she began scaling back — releasing albums every three or four years, touring behind them, then taking time off to pursue other interests.
Moving from Los Angeles to Santa Fe, New Mexico, Tunstall has written musicals, contributed to children’s records and movie soundtracks. And she can now do solo acoustic tours rather than just hit the road with a band.
“It’s wonderful,” she said. “You feel like you’re going to die with so much happiness. You get to find your creativity and your craft in so many things. I should get T-shirts made that say ‘I don’t just. …’ It really feels like heaven.”
Tunstall was also slowed down by gradual loss of hearing in her left ear, which began in 2008. A decade later, Tunstall went deaf in the ear.
“I went deaf halfway through a tour and ended up holed up in the meatpacking district of New York for two weeks, thankfully with a view of the Hudson (River),” she said. “That helped with my tremendous vertigo. That was the worst part of it. I basically felt I’d drank two bottles of tequila all the time.”
It was shocking, Tunstall said, when she learned her hearing wouldn’t come back. But she said she took her doctor’s advice to “get out and live your life.”
“I nearly got run over five times for not hearing something from my left side,” she said. “After two or three weeks, I did my first show. It was the Killington Women’s Downhill Ski Championships. It went fine. It was good.”
Another show in Nashville proved to Tunstall that she could continue to have a musical career.
“The fact I knew in my mind I was able to play a show as well as ever gave me hope and confidence,” Tunstall said. “I can do everything anybody else can do, only in mono. And, as musician friends tell me, all the best records are in mono.”
FINDING A NEW RHYTHM IN STEREO
Tunstall’s new album, “Nut,” isn’t in mono. It’s a finely wrought stereo conclusion to an album trilogy — which also includes 2016’s “Kin” and 2018’s “Wax” — that are based on the themes of soul, body and mind. She’s fresh off a U.K. and European tour with a band where she played “Nut” in its entirety, along with about 10 of her best-known songs.
“It was interesting playing ‘Nut’ with the band,” she said. “‘Nut’ is about the mind. I thought it might be the most nerdy of the three and it turned out to be the most touching and emotional of all. That was a real surprise. People were emotionally engaging with the songs.
“We played ‘Out of Touch’ as the first encore, it’s my positive pandemic song, people were on their feet and clapping in the same way as for ‘Black House and the Cherry Tree,’” Tunstall said. “I was flabbergasted. That gives a newfound confidence in stripping them back and playing them acoustically on this solo tour.”
She won’t be playing all the songs from “Nut” on her current solo jaunt, but some will be on the setlist.
“I’ve got to choose carefully,” she said. “One of my great prides in life is I’ve never put anything out that I didn’t think was good. But some songs are built to come alive in the studio and some are more fitted to acoustic, solo.”
Regardless of the songs she chooses, the show, she said, will be more fun for her than a full band performance.
“It’s funny, people often think it’s harder to do a solo show,” she said. “But it’s easier. You’re not tied to anything. You can make mistakes and work them into the show. I’ve been thinking recently about how good it would be to go out on a tour with just a guitar. When you have a band, loops and all that, there’s a chance they will become a crutch. I want to go out where it’s my voice and the song. That’s what I’ll be doing. I think I’ll love it.”
KT Tunstall’s 2023 West Coast Tour
When: 7 p.m. Saturday, June 10
Where: The Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood
Tickets: $30 at Troubadour.com
Also: 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 7 at Belly Up, 143 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach. Tickets are $25 for those 21-and-older only at Ticketweb.com; 8 p.m. Sunday, June 18 at Pappy & Harriet’s, 53688 Pioneertown Road, Pioneertown. Tickets are $35 at pappyandharriets.com. Tunstall will perform with Frank Turner at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21 at House of Blues, 400 Disney Way, Anaheim. Tickets start at $54.50 at LiveNation.com.