KT Tunstall

Part 1

0:03Well hello everyone thanks for coming by this is cool. I didn't expect to have a crowd. It's nice. Hi. This is Katie Tanstall. Hello. Hello How are you? I'm very well. Thank you. Yeah, how long have you been in our fair country? I've been here since about Half past nine this morning. Oh this morning. Well, no, that's not true. I'd be I was in Canada Yes, I played the Regina folk festival last night. How was that? How does that compare to this one? Fantastic Well, I don't know yet. I just got here So it's this is obviously quite a lot bigger. Yeah, and it's definitely got that kind of massive festival vibe And I'm seeing people dressed up and it's all looking good. It's all very promising What's your favorite since we're at festivals and you've been at festivals for quite a while now? What's your favorite festival memory? my favorite festival memory is possibly

0:49When I was running along a very dirty track I can't even run maybe tea in the park which is a festival in Scotland and Wayne coin from the flaming lips had looked like he'd stolen a golf cart and He was kind of bombing along this track and I said Wayne coin You rule and he stopped his golf cart and gave me a big hug. That was very cool. That was very cool So you got two sets today 540 stage 5 Jeremy Fisher a few other people what you know what's going on? No one seems to know what the studs are either I was hoping someone was gonna tell me now I'm taking my guitar. That's all I know. Yeah, so it's just you in the loop pedals today. Do you have your band? Just myself. It's just me and me and guitar on stage I have two guys from my band. So it's just a three pieces a stripped down quite a rocky show And I do have my loop pedal with me tonight. So yeah Taiwanese. What do you call it?

1:36I mean he's orchestra exactly. I want to go back though No, there was no music in your house as a kid. Is this true? You did not listen to your kids? My my folks weren't big music fans. They didn't listen to music. So what got you into it then? It was more about playing I was really into into playing instruments and so when I did my music class at school My music teacher was a piano player and I'd just watch how she was playing and I'd really want to learn how to play So when I was about four I asked my parents for a piano and they were pretty bummed that I'd chosen like the biggest instrument you could choose And so yeah, I started to start learning classical piano And then really just got into learning anything I could get my hands on just to up myself To ended up teaching myself guitar and singing. I've not had lessons in those things

2:23It was just finding a way of writing and feeling it felt natural to play those things. Do you still play piano? Yeah, I do actually. You don't bring it on live though. No, I've done it. I did a solo tour of North America and that I took a keyboard there But I'm just I'm not made to play piano because you have to be so precise when you play piano and I am so I'm a messy musician I'm just all about vibe and rhythm. So when it got out that time, I know with the pedal timing is a big thing I put down a lot of my success to doing tap dancing when I was a kid and learning some Learning some good old coordination was a good thing So where did the loop pedal idea come from because that's pretty innovative the way especially the way you do it Well, it was really because I'd recorded that first album I to the telescope

3:11And I'd been playing open night and playing on the street and doing a whole load of you know solo stuff And then got my record deal and made made a record and it kind of sounded like a band Even though it wasn't really it was people coming in and playing and it wasn't exactly Five of us in a room being recorded like I played quite a few of the things myself and So when it came to actually going out and and playing that record for people I just couldn't face going out and just being girl with guitar. There was so many girls just with guitars And I really needed the rhythm the rhythm had become such an important part of what I did so a friend had What it was really just a guitar loop pedal and I'd seen a couple of people a great guy called Jim White

3:58You know, I don't know if you know he don't American singer songwriter He would loop his guitars and I saw another guy who I'm pretty sure is Canadian actually he's called son of Dave Oh, yeah, I think he used to know and he would beatbox and play harmonica and kind of wrap the blues over his voice And I thought to myself well surely you can put the guitar and the voice into this thing So my friend and I kind of set to working out how to do that And and it was when I started beating up my guitar that I realized that I could kind of use it as a drum machine and That it kind of kicked off. How does it work for the new songs? The new songs are a lot more electronic than the folks that I get to do Yeah, there's more electronic in the new stuff and I've I've incorporated another bit of gadgetry Which is actually a more electronic pedal which I play on a my old song other side of the world

4:45I've kind of revamped and so I've just introduced some electronic beats as well as the analog stuff that I'm recording So you decided to make it what do you call it nature techno or something? Nature techno nature techno record doesn't really describe the whole record It was more as a sort of target for me to remember Where I was trying to get to with the sound of the kind of feel of the records Which is sort of a mixture between my favorite electronic dance music and Eddie Cochran where Eddie Cochran. Yeah like 12-bar blues Eddie Cochran. Yeah, but you know you listen to come on everybody in summertime blues and They make me feel pretty similar to really great dance tunes like left field and chemical brothers that make me want to dance and they've got a pulse and they just feel They just make you present when you listen to that kind of music and

5:33And that's that's what I wanted to kind of get through you was it wasn't really about sounding like a dance record It was more about using Playing instruments the way that I play them to sound like that So it's a lot of natural instruments making the sound of a conventional dance record And you certainly went to the right place to record it. You did. Yeah Like this is where the Berlin wall was is that true the studio? Yeah, hands the studio where I recorded Tiger suit was it was called hands up by the wall And Bowie recorded heroes there and Iggy pot recorded YouTube did acting baby Depeche mode mixed their first records on the roof and the the the Berlin wall was still standing in that that stage it was in the 80s and and by all accounts Depeche mode went up on the roof took a PA system and and

6:23And pointed the speakers at East Germany because it's in West Germany the studio so that the East German But like patrol could hear their records and they were sort of all So it's a really amazing place But of course Berlin and Germany are also intrinsic to the electronic dance movement I mean, it's kind of the birthplace of well craft work, but a lot of very important dance music So and and Berlin's great. I'd never really been before and it's got such an energy to it It made it for me because I live in London now And it made London feel quite self-conscious like we're worrying about what other people think and There's more artists per square mile in Berlin than any other city in the world Apparently and it's very cheap to live there

7:09But it's also there's just a real lack of self-consciousness People are just getting on with doing what they want to do and not worrying about what people think of them So that's a really healthy environment for sure. Where do you think the next record's gonna go? I mean, it's a natural progression for me I'm very excited about the next record actually Do you write on the road? Are you writing right now? A little I've started to I never have in the past But I've had a new song stuck in my head all day today. Are we gonna hear it tonight? No, my first verse is wrong. I've got to work it out, but Yeah, what I'm gonna do is that Jim Abbiss who I worked with on this last record He also did the Arctic Monkeys. He did a Dell's first record He's worked with a bunch of really editors as well if you're yeah, he's worked with some really fantastic

7:57Original new acts and so when I went into this studio with him I just thought you know this is this is a guy who can sort of listen So what makes you different from other people and really put the microscope on that rather than trying to make you fit in Which I really liked about him But in the process of it we just had such a laugh and we were coming up with all these kind of beds to songs that just were pumping Dance tracks and they were sort of going a little too far So we've decided that in September we're gonna go back to the room that we started working in which is Trevor Horns studio in London where George Michael recorded faith Yes, and which we bonded over loving this song and we're gonna make a proper dance records We're just gonna really not under my name. We'll do under a side project and we're just gonna go in and laugh for three weeks and

8:46Make a dance record and then I'll start on my next solo album, which I think my My aim with the next solo record is just to I want it to be about just crying I want it to be about either happy crying or sad crying. I just want it to be emotional and really very Lofi and raw and quite DIY is what I'm looking at. Wow. Are you still have a label though? Yeah? No, I'm still on EMI and the EFI was just you though, right? The EFI was yeah, that was the first sort of very Autonomous project that I did and we did it. I did it with my husband. He's the drummer in the band and we recorded it our solar powered studio Oh in England and it's the first thing we've sort of produced in that way

9:32And it was so liberating to go god. We can I can write a song we can go in the studio at any time of day Record the song and then stick it out put it on vinyl It's just so it's so great And I think that I think with the way that music's going and the way that it's struggling under the weight of the internet changing How people get their music? I think that the way that you make music and the way that you deliver the music is now Incredibly important to fans, you know not to just do it a normal way slap it on a CD you have a big ad campaign It's not very exciting anymore You want a story and you want to craft something that people are really? Invested in and they think wow that's a really great story And I want to be part of it by getting hold of that. Do you need a full record then or can you just put out songs? I mean, this is the thing. This is how it's changing so much. I think that people are

10:22Musicians are really getting to a place where they will release almost immediately People I'm a massive advocate of the album and I think I'll probably always make albums But you can't force people to buy the whole album But one thing I would say is that you know, I feel that Many many of my fans who come up and say hi Tell me that their favorite what their favorite song is and it's so seldomly a single It's usually an album track and you just think well, you know You you may well not have heard that track if you hadn't clicked on the whole album rather than just pick the songs that you hear on the radio Whatever, so I still think an albums a really important way of delivering a whole artwork of ideas Rather than just you know the catchy stuff because the catchy stuff is great, but it's not necessarily the best

11:12Do you try and write singles? Do you know you're writing a single when you're writing a song? No, you don't you don't set out. I don't set out to write it But then I'll come up sometimes I'll come up with a riff and like this new song that's stuck in my head I was like, okay, that's good. That's good. That's good. It's good. It's good and you know, it might be But you just you Nobody knows. I mean you talk to the most successful record dude, and he doesn't know nobody knows There's not really a formula for for making something successful and But certainly you know my seven minute Talking songs with no singing in the background probably aren't gonna be a single point We got a place of singles. Oh, it's a radio station obviously

11:57Yeah, so when this airs on Monday what we do on the website is we have three songs people can vote on them So I thought maybe we get you to do a little storytellers about those three songs Yeah, cut in whichever one wins. So let's start with black horse since it was the big huge worldwide hit well black horse is a pretty bizarre story because I Recorded I to the telescope and black horse wasn't written and The album was being pressed, you know, everything was going fine and then Jules Holland who has this fantastic music show in the UK His scouts had come around to check out one of my rehearsals to see if they liked what I was doing and my record label boss said Play that new one the poorest one the woo-hoo the woo-hoo song and I was like, um

12:47But what's the point of that because it's not on my record? You know, I was thinking I'll save this for the next record and he said well don't worry about it Just play it and see what happens So I played it feeling quite stressed out that you know This is not on my album and I it's just a brand new song And so a couple few weeks went by and then I got this phone call I was on tour playing in my friend's band And they said that Nas the rapper had pulled out of the show because his father was sick and Would I like to take the spot? You know, I'm completely unknown and my album album hasn't been released yet and so of course I say yes and That again my record label like play that play the new one. I was like your mental This is not on the record We have no recording of this song so don't worry about it

13:34Just play it just play it and so I play the song and then it kind of goes through the reef and it becomes this sort of sensation and everybody's into it and So the first 10,000 copies of my album have the audio from the TV show Because we had no recording of the song And then we ended up recording it in a day just me in the drummer and and that was it but really it was a song about It was partly about going through the experience of signing a record deal and as a musician it's You think that it's gonna be amazing and you want to drink champagne and party all night And it's you know, it's incredible and actually I find it one of the most terrifying soul questioning moments for me where I was just going on my am I signing my freedom away here what am I doing? I don't know these people are they gonna want to change me and so it's really a song about

14:28Robert Johnson esque story of being at a crossroads and you feel that one way is a light way and one way is a dark way and Not really feeling that one is right or wrong, but just having to make a decision where to go Well seven years later. Do you feel like you sold your soul? No, I don't feel like I sold my soul But I've definitely I've battled I've been in battle, you know, I don't think that really you know the agendas of a of a record label and of an artist will never ever be the same so You're always gonna fight I think there's really something really wrong if you don't fight with your label because they've they're trying to sell you And they're trying to make you make stuff those cells So and that's not your priority as an artist

15:13So you know you pick your battles and you have some good fights and you end up putting out what you want to fit out and You get there in the end. Let's move on to the next record. Rest it fantastic and well hold on hold on was really If you listen to the first album and then you listen to the second album to drastic fantastic I think hold on is the point where you can hear that I'm starting to get really interested in beats and I had moved to Northwest London and it's an area of London where there's a huge dance hall scene There's a lot of Jamaican a lot of West Indian people living there and they've kind of got their own very microcosmic music scene So the these gigs will happen that they only happen in this area But you'll you'll walk around Harleston where I was living in London and everywhere the windows are down and it's just going

16:08Everywhere every window just that's the beat is the dance hall beat everywhere and I was like god that's I love that beat and So yeah, I stole it All right Yeah, it's good fun fade like a shadow the new single fade like a shadow is one of my favorite tricks with a song where Um, you have what sounds like a very upbeat Happy positive song and it's actually quite bitchy It's quite a nasty Not nasty. It's just quite a scathing song and what had happened was that I'd met I'd met Someone who I I don't name and shame. It doesn't seem fair um

16:53who had really got under my skin and They kind of haunted me For a while after I'd met them and I just couldn't shake this feeling It's just meeting someone who doesn't make you feel good about yourself and you feel like they're doing it deliberately um And so I was really struggling to kind of shake this this feeling of being haunted and And so I ended up Kind of exercising it in a song Nice And so yeah, it's quite a needly number, but it definitely helped me get past whatever it was cool I know you got to go because you're on stage soon. So we do something called five questions five quick questions one more answers Road or studio? Oh I can't I would have said road straight away about two years ago and now I have my own studio. I can't answer that question

17:44I'm loving I'm loving studio to lennener mccourtney um Lenin Sorry, paul. That's okay. What what moves you most lyrics melody or rhythm? I it's so hard. That's like saying you're gonna choose your brain your heart or your soul um I would say at the moment rhythm, but They're all They're equal powers in the world. Soong you've written your most proud of ha um There's a song it changes because you're always just proudest of the most recent thing that you've done but there's a song that i'll play tonight, which is a part of a new collection of uh

18:34very acoustic Fingir picked songs And it's called the scarlet chulep and uh, it was just it just came together with The melody the ricks of that there is you know, the rhythm isn't a big part of it actually, but it was just um It was just one of those songs where I felt like I was remembering it rather than actually coming up with it It just felt very old and very familiar and very proud of that one cool and in one word katie tonsil Hi, it's good. I'll take it. Thank you for katie tonsil. Thank you

Part 2

0:06Hi, I'm Katie Tunstall and you're watching MSN Exclusives. So this video, that's that difference. It's like Lord of the Rings, you've got swords and armor and horses. I got put into Game of Thrones. I don't take my clothes off that.

0:51That's the more present reference. I don't do the like oops, my dress has fallen off Game of Thrones. I do the... Kaleesi. I do the sword fighting, but there's some funny stories behind that video. Well, that's what we're here for. We're here for funny stories with Katie Tunstall. Well, it's the Invisible Empire video. And first of all, the guy who is the sword fighting knight in the video, he actually, the guy who was meant to do it, phoned up 10 minutes before he was meant to be there and told us that he'd fallen off his motorbike on the motorway and he was okay and he was going to be there in like 10 minutes. He didn't show up for two hours. And so when you're shooting a video, a music video in one day, you can't really have the guy who's in the video not turning up.

1:38And so we didn't really know what to do. And it was in this beautiful forest in Kent in England, south of London. And then there's three guys working in this forest, three foresters, if you will. And one of them, Julian, has been doing medieval sword fighting for 12 years, is the right size for the armor and has allowed the day off. And so he basically takes the day off and becomes the knight in the video and teaches me how to do it because I'd never done it before. It's a new skill. Yeah, so he was just this complete angel sent by the god of Game of Thrones to save the day. And then secondly, I mean, I am a horse rider, but I've not done a lot. Majorly confidence over technique.

2:25And the director had just gone to the beach a few days before and just found someone with a horse and just said, hey, do you mind if we use your horse in a video? And they're like, yeah, sure. And so the horse was kind of mental. It was a lovely, lovely horse, but I mean, quite old actually, but incredibly excited to be on the beach and did not want to stand still. And so while they're like pulling focus and getting everything ready, I'm having to run this massive horse all around the beach and there's people everywhere. You can't see them in the video. There's all these people having their picnics and it was like driving a sports car. It's like, if you don't turn the wheel, it's just going to go straight into someone's picnic. And children. And it was pretty intense.

3:10And so I was kind of the whole time going, stop, stop! And then when the camera came on, I'd just be like, poise, poise, stop! Consulate professional. It was a very sore bomb for about a week. I can imagine. Yeah, it was full on. Invisible Empire. Opens the record. It's a beautiful opening and even the little, I don't know what it is at the intro of that song. It's actually a melodron, which is a beautiful, very old instrument. And one of the few real ones is at WaveLab Studio and Tucson, because it's very common to use it as a plugin, like just an electronic thing, copying it. But you feed, it's rolls of card with holes in and it reads like an old organ.

3:55Or maybe it's discs. It might be metal discs, actually. But it's kind of samples of flutes and samples of clarinets and it just sounds fantastic. It was used in a lot of old kids' animation in the 70s. So in Britain, so it's very nostalgic sound for me. It almost bridges it. What do you call it? Nature Techno from the last record. I think it's what you told me. It almost kind of bridges that into what this is. Folktronica. Folktronica. I like that. Yeah. Next record. Folktronica. Did the songs just lend themselves to that kind of arrangement? Or was it purposefully going into saying, I don't want to add all the stuff over it? It was a very easy record. This is definitely the easiest album I've ever made. And it just came so quickly. The first half of the record I wrote, I met Hough Gell, front guy of Giant Sound, Mavric, punk spirit,

4:43genius musician, in February of last year. And he said, come out to Tucson and do some recording lists. We didn't say let's make an album. He just said, come out and record and let's have some fun. And I really needed that kind of experimental approach where it wasn't labeled before we did anything. And in the February and March before going to Tucson, I wrote like nine songs, which was a lot for me. And that was the first, the six of those were the first half of the record. And I heard you wrote basically everything at the same time kind of scribbling back and forth. So did lyrics lend themselves from one song and say, no, that fits better here? No. I wrote them all in tandem, which I don't usually do. I'll always usually stick to one song and finish it. But these all were, I mean it was like that crazy game at old school, game at the fair,

5:30where the horses are going and you're cranking and they're kind of all coming in. So I kept getting quite stressed out that I wasn't finishing anything. And then they all finished at the same time and somehow they stayed completely separate entities from one another. There's definitely similarities I think stylistically between the songs, but in terms of their content, they stayed pretty hermetically sealed. I hear it was really hot when you were making this record, like sweltering heat. Does that loopiness add to the creativity? Well, I just couldn't go outside. It's just too dangerous for a Scottish person in Arizona. It's really a threatening temperature. But it was totally bearable when I was there in April.

6:17And I took a drive now and then an evening, which was really cool. And then when I went back in November, it was cooler and my very good friend Jane Mingay, a great photojournalist who decided to do all the photos for my record. Her and I just took house 1960s Barakuda and drove into the desert and had a great time just getting all the imagery. So it really sinks in that landscape. It's the first time with the imagery. It's the first time it's not your face. It's still you on the cover, but it's the opposite side. Yeah, I think it's probably significant. Is it? Yeah, I think so. It came very easily actually because it was just so striking with the landscape. It just spoke about what the record was like.

7:02And it was the first time as well in my career where I really knew what I wanted to wear. I'd never engaged very much with image. And I just sort of threw on a rock uniform and get some leather trousers and a cool t-shirt or whatever. But I'd never had a vision for how I wanted to look when I made an album or play. I think a lot of that was actually deliberately shying away from it because, A, I'm not madly interested in fashion. I like nice clothes. I like well-designed stuff, but I'm not crazy about getting involved with it. But really I think the main thing was that as a female artist I was just really paranoid about having that double judgment

7:48of being a female musician, that it's so much emphasis as part of how you look. And I just really didn't want to engage with that. I just wanted to be a musician. I really didn't want the attention to be on. I didn't want to be in magazines. I didn't want to have people comment on what I was wearing. So I just got on with it really and wore what I like. But this album's been very different because I had this really strong image of wearing a suit and wearing this hat that I'd found in Italy and kind of assuming more of a character really. Did you have that going into songwriting or did the songwriting speak to that imagery? Wearing a suit thing had already happened. I kind of had this feeling that I just wanted to dress classy and more formal.

8:34But formal is really the wrong word because I look at someone like Nick Cave wearing a suit. And that's what I mean. It's actually just a very classic powerful image. Do you do that on stage too? That's the character for this whole... And it's me. That's a different way of doing a run. It is me. It's not an alter ego in any way, but it's definitely part of me. Speaking of being on tour and talking about the music as opposed to the fashion part of it. Just you. Just me. Just you. Solo tour. And we're starting the tour today. I'm always excited about the first gig. It's always slightly nerve-wracking because I don't think about it until about half an hour before. So the set list, whatever you feel like? I've loved all the new stuff, but I've forgotten all the old stuff. My brain tends to delete when it doesn't need stuff which is annoying sometimes.

9:23How will the old stuff play in... They must have been written on acoustic guitars, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean I think Bar, my last record which was very electronic, inspired and made in Berlin and really kind of an adventure in Sonics rather than songwriting. There's still a few songs on that that I can easily sit and play, but maybe less so with that record. But in general, all the stuff I write you can sit and play. Cool. So it's quite nice to deliver them very straight back. When you saw my tweet yesterday, people did respond, ask questions. Oh really? It is. It doesn't happen every time, but we got a couple of them. Someone asked one and I replied to her and I said I will be the answer to that. I hope it's not one of them that I choose. Well, see, I didn't tell her the answer. If you don't ask it then I'll answer it for you. Okay, cool. It's post-apocalyptic UK. Okay.

10:08And is this the one? No. Okay. And you have to burn all your books and guitars to keep warm except one of each. Booking a guitar, what would they do? Booking a guitar. Well, guitar, I would keep my 1959 Gibson acoustic. It would have been my 1975 Gretsch Falcon, but I didn't even amp and a plug. Right. The apocalypse is going to ruin all the plugs of it. No power. So I'm going to take my new very old 1959 Gibson acoustic parlor guitar, which is so beautiful to play. Parlor, the little guy. Yeah, it's half size and suits this record down to T, but it's like the guitar I've been looking for forever. Is it the guitar that's all over this record? No. I just bought, I just bought, I found it a couple of months ago. Okay. And I saw it and it was a proper, there you are.

10:53I've been looking for you, so it's been really nice to find him. And one book. And one book. Yeah. That's really hard. What would I want to read over and over again? That's the thing that I always find difficult with this question. It's just like, what would you get more and more and more out of? You have to take something quite big. You have a lot of time on your hands. Yeah, exactly. I might actually take a brief history of time by Stephen Hawking and try and get to grips with it. Okay. That kind of goes to your tweet the other day with the white blood cells in the sun. Yeah. Blew my mind. Well, I'll just explain that, basically. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, what is he talking about? You know, the white blood cells in the sun. Don't worry about it. If the sun was the size of a white blood cell, the Milky Way would be the size of the United

11:38States of America. Okay. Other Twitter question. Very similar, same girl, but I like these ones. You got what? Very apocalyptic, this one. If you got washed up on an island with an old record player in one vinyl. That's the one. I think she said a Dan Seton. Dan Seton record player. Dan Set record player. Yes. Okay. Django Reinhardt. It sounds amazing on an old Dan Set. And I had one. Well, that's why she mentioned these specific record players. An old Dan Set record player. It's one of the ones where the speaker is in built at the old box from the 50s and you put the lid up and then when you close it, it creates the sound properly. But new records sound foul on those things. You just don't get any width and depth of sonics.

12:26But Django Reinhardt on one of those is like a time machine. You just feel like you're in a good place at a good time. We don't have much time, but just the vinyl idea, and I know you kind of crafted this record with the idea of two. Did you ever think about releasing it separately? As two EPs or whatever you want? No, it was always going to be one. It was always going to be one record and it was very much inspired by the A and B side of a vinyl. So it was lovely. So it had to be. It had held the vinyl in my hands. It was great to know that it reached its true perfection. So we do something called five questions. Five good questions, one word answers. One word. One word. Ten years today, we've been doing the same five questions. Road or studio? Studio. Used to be road.

13:11Nice studio. Leonard McCartney. Leonard. When you hear a song what hits you first, lyrics, melody or rhythm? Melody. If someone's never heard Katie Tunstall before, what song do they start with? I don't know the answer to that one. Personally, what would I choose? That's a really hard question. I know it's my new favorite one. I would say you probably have to listen to Black Horse in the cherry tree because it's just my little package. I don't like that. A live version of the recorded version. A live version. Jules Holland? With Seven Nation Army in the middle of it. You can find it on YouTube. In one word, Katie Tunstall.

13:59Me. That was a quick answer. I like that. That's good.