The Big Interview: KT Tunstall

The last time KT Tunstall was in Yorkshire, she found herself in the kitchen of Bishopthorpe Palace. It was two days before Christmas, the sun had not even risen and the Archbishop of York was cooking up a plate of banana fritters. The doors of the palace had been thrown open to Chris Evans’ Radio 2 breakfast show team and Tunstall provided the musical entertainment. After sampling the fritters, she and the Manic Street Preachers’ James Dean Bradfield performed a rendition of Fairytale of New York in the Great Hall as a pair of reindeer were paraded around the snow-covered front lawn.

“As gigs go, that was pretty much as surreal as it gets,” says Tunstall as she prepares to head back to Yorkshire. This time it will be for an altogether more subdued affair as she embarks on an acoustic tour. “I was prepared for it all to be quite serious and very religious, you don’t expect an Archbishop to be force-feeding you banana fritters at 7am in the morning.”

Like most things, Tunstall took her early morning encounter with the Archbishop in her stride and as she listened to Moira Stewart read the news from a tinsel-clad grotto, she was just pleased to be back on stage. Eighteen months earlier, after six years of almost constant gigging, she had been ordered by her record company to take some time off.

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While initially reluctant to pack up her guitar, Tunstall did as she was told and with her husband Luke Bullen, who also happens to be the drummer in her band, the pair embarked on what she describes as a belated gap year.

First stop was the Arctic as part of a project being run by the arts organisation Cape Farewell. It was on board a boat surrounded by ice caps, where the likes of Jarvis Cocker and Martha Wainwright, were among the other passengers, that Tunstall realised just how much she needed a break.

“There is always a worry that if you go away for that amount of time, you’re never going to come back, but at the same time I couldn’t wait. I’d been on the road for years and I don’t really write when I’m on tour so new material had become a bit of a problem.

“That trip to the Arctic was brilliant and awful at the same time. The idea was that you take a group of musicians to this wonderful place and each of them will be inspired artistically by what they see. Unfortunately, I had one of my worst gigs ever out at a place called Uummannaq. I just felt like a fraud. I didn’t want to be on stage. I had never felt like that. My confidence was at an all time low and I knew I had to get back to what had turned me onto music in the first place.”

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The small town in Greenland would later provide the inspiration for one of the tracks on her third album, but for a brief moment she did wonder whether she would ever record again.

Tunstall’s rise to fame is well-documented. A regular busker and familiar face on the folk circuit, she was 27, positively ancient in music circles, when she was booked as a last-minute replacement for the rapper Nas on Later...with Jools Holland. Her performance of the country-inspired Black House and the Cherry Tree saw interest in the Scottish singer/songwriter rocket and after signing to Relentless her début album Eye to the Telescope followed soon after.

With big guitar and soulful voice, Tunstall, who grew-up listening to Chrissie Hynde, Patti Smith and PJ Harvey, seemed like a throwback to a different age and won a Mercury Prize nomination for her efforts. While she eventually lost out to Anthony and the Johnsons, she did pick up an Ivor Novello award and the album sold four million copies.

“When I first started it was a very male scene and I was the chick with the guitar. It was great to be signed to a label, but I had never gone in search of fame and having a few years experience under my belt definitely helped. I knew what I was prepared to do and what I wasn’t.

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“Since I’ve been making records things have changed so much. Some of the change has been for the better and artists like Adele have really raised the profile of female singer/songwriters. Getting into the music business is not easy, staying in it is even harder and as a young woman it’s extra challenging.”

Tunstall is not an artist who has much time for the fripperies of the music business. She’s never had a stylist, laughs when asked whether her label has ever had any involvement in her image and has been very vocal at the use of sex to sell records. Last year when she accused Colombian singer Shakira of exploiting her sexuality, Twitter went into overload, most of the posts telling Tunstall to keep her thoughts to herself. She’s no puritan and says the Shakira debacle was blown out of all proportion, but don’t expect to see her posing for Playboy any time soon.

“It strikes me as very odd for someone to think, ‘you know what if I put on a bikini, I may shift some more records’, but it happens. If people are comfortable with that, then fine, but it’s not something that would ever cross my mind. I write songs, I play a guitar and that’s it.”

It was the desire to get back to the simplicity of performing that prompted the year out. After the Arctic trip had faltered, she and Bullen went off exploring together. They travelled through South America, India and New Zealand and on route she did find her voice again. Tunstall’s too down to earth to describe it as a journey of self-discovery, but the resulting album Tiger Suit, named after a recurring dream she has had since a child, did mark a new chapter in her career.

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“I see a tiger in the back garden and go outside to stroke it,” she says. “When I go back inside, I’m completely seized by the fear I could have been killed.

“Over the years I’ve come to think that it’s me disguised as the tiger, it’s me wearing a tiger suit.

“This album was about rediscovering the confidence to do what I felt was right for me musically. The only way you survive in music is if you make something that excites you and that you want to play.

“Going away travelling was incredibly liberating. What I realised was I’m still feral. I’ve always felt a bit feral. As a kid I was always wanting to be outside in bushes or in a tent. I always wanted movement and adventure.”

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While Tunstall may have got her nomadic tendencies from her childhood, music wasn’t the focus of the family home, in fact her father, a university physics lecturer, apparently owned just one tape and that was a comedy recording by mathematician and musical satirist Tom Lehrer. It was at school that she learned to play the piano, flute and guitar and it was there where she formed her first band.

She’s 36 now and two decades after she first picked up a guitar her next tour, which arrives in Yorkshire this month, is an exercise in going back to basics. The band, including her husband will be left behind, as Tunstall plays a series of intimate acoustic gigs.

“It was just me with a guitar when I started out, so in many ways it feels like I have come full circle. I’ve been on the road with a band for the best part of 10 years so I guess it will be a little strange, but there’s a part of me that’s really excited about going out on my own, plus I get to play different venues. In Yorkshire I’ll be playing the Grand Opera House which I’ve heard is a fantastic venue.”

While Tunstall is travelling the length of the country, Bullen will be back at their Wiltshire home, which the couple have given an eco-makeover. While she’s not the preachy type, environmental concerns loom large in Tunstall’s life and she’s also behind a project to encourage other artists to have one eye on sustainability when it comes to recording and touring.

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“We built a studio with solar panels and people honestly think that we can only use it one week in May, but honestly it’s fully functioning. I just think that if you are in the position to do something which benefits the environment then you should, it’s as simple as that.”

So after a momentary blip, life seems good for Tunstall, but she’s not one for tempting fate.

“I never feel 100 per cent confident, if I ever did I suspect the next time I looked my whole life would have fallen apart.”

KT Tunstall plays York Grand Opera House on November 6. 0844 847 2322, www.grandoperahouseyork.org.uk