Q&A with KT Tunstall

In 2016, KT Tunstall released her fifth studio album Kin, the first of a mooted mind, body and soul trilogy which she has recently completed with latest album Nut (the “mind” bit). Life has been pretty eventful in the intervening years. Tunstall has lost the hearing in one of her ears, and consequently scaled back her touring. During the pandemic, she connected with fans by hosting online KT raves beamed from her LA home. Then she moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and continued work on a musical theatre version of Saving Grace, a film about marijuana cultivation set in a Cornish fishing village.

So there was a lot to talk about when Entertainment Now caught up with the “Suddenly I See” hitmaker via Zoom. Here’s KT take on…

Coming through lockdown…

At the time I was really burned out from gigging so actually I found it extremely helpful from a life point of view. I could easily have done another year of just taking stock of the last fifteen years of constant touring – of course, a very privileged position to be in, to be worrying about that rather than how to pay your rent, so I felt very lucky at the same time.

Coping with hearing loss…

I got a call from Steven Ambrose who was the guy who invented the original in-ear monitors for musicians and he was prototyping a brand new bit of kit for Brian Johnston of AC/DC who had really badly lost his hearing and had given up touring. Basically, they are very light earpieces called Adels which aren’t molds, they are little airbags – you stick them in deflated and pump them up, and they are highly superior to the old school in-ears. I can actually hear better on stage than I could when I could hear. They’ve changed the game for me. Your brain is amazing, it gets used to your new situation.

Playing Madison Square Gardens in 2020…

Madison Square Gardens is such a moment in your career and I had this really unique situation where I got to play completely solo which no one gets to do! I had twenty minutes on stage supporting Hall & Oates and 45 seconds into the first song everything died, all my lead pedals, all the lights. I’m in Madison Square Gardens with 20,000 people staring at me and all I’ve got is a mic. All roads led to that moment of how to deal with that so I just said ‘if my 15-year-old self could see all my gear fucking up at Madison Square Gardens she’d be so happy’ and everyone cheered and they were really with me but I just sobbed my guts out after that because there was so much adrenalin. I got through it so I was very proud of myself.

Writing a musical…

The learning curve of writing musicals has been thrilling but very challenging. Being a newbie I have to trust the process but what we have found is that we will need to cast someone who can absolutely belt it because there are some real banger songs in there. I’m doing music and lyrics on twenty songs so a lot of my creative juice was being used up on something very structural and collaborative and almost mathematical.

Making her latest album…

When it came to finishing the album, I just didn’t have the lyrics. So I sent all my music to my collaborator Martin Terefe. He’s the only person I would trust to have at it. Andy Burrows of Razorlight got involved and ended up doing his drums in a shed somewhere in Gloucestershire and Liam from Sneaker Pimps was somewhere else doing bits and pieces and Martin would keep sending me stuff. Usually I would be over his shoulder listening to every single sound in the studio fifteen hours a day but we just couldn’t do that during lockdown so I made a really conscious decision to let go and listen to it and ask yourself if you like it and if you like it, just go with it.

Some of it is really challenging to play and sing at the same time and that means you really have to up your game and learn new parts and new skills and new rhythms to be able to perform the songs. It’s been a huge challenge, learning my own songs, but I’ve really enjoyed it.

What we can expect from her current tour….

Nut is the shortest record I’ve written so we’re able to play the whole album in the set, which I’ve never done before. We’re peppering it with all the favourites but it’s such a thrill to play the whole album and finish the set with a new song and do what we want. I’m going to make it worth it, I promise that.