Exclusive interview: Tenille Townes on how The Acrobat “healed me in a lot of ways”

Nashville-based singer-songwriter Tenille Townes is set to return to the UK in less than a week’s time to kick-off her intimate Living Room Tour at The Gate in Cardiff.

The four-date UK run, which kicks off in Cardiff on Tuesday, September 29th, before dates in London, Manchester and Glasgow, is a tour that comes with a unique spin on it. In a special effort to champion local talent, each night's support artist was hand-selected by Townes herself from a pool of emerging singer-songwriters who entered an exclusive competition hosted by Headliner Magazine. Nearly 150 applicants entered the competition, with The Goudies, Luke Hart, Katie Rigby and Abigail Pryde being personally handpicked by Townes to support her on the four dates. But what came into the decision to run the competition?

“Honestly, I just am so excited about getting to learn about new independent artists in this chapter that I'm in. It's kind of like, wait a second, there's a whole incredible community of people figuring it out,” Townes explained. “I just admire that so much. We'd announced the tour, and I'd gotten some messages of, like, 'Hey, like, I'm new, I'm in this area, I'm an independent artist, and I just want to throw my hat in the ring.' And I was like, that's so brave and incredible to me. I was like, what if we just picked the openers like that? And so it was so cool to get Headliner to help us, you know, set up a place where people could send their music. And I had the best time listening through,” she finished.

“I sat down to just get back to the anchor of the songs”

The trip across the Atlantic comes after an immense run of success over the past five years for Townes. The Alberta-born artist has gained two JUNO Awards, two ACM Awards and 17 CCMA Awards, amassed 315M+ global streams and scored two Canadian No. 1 singles, launched her own independent record label and has since released her fourth studio album - ‘The Acrobat’. The aforementioned album was a record that Townes made fully acoustic, but what came into the decision to adopt that approach?

“Well, to be honest, when I was setting out to make this record, I was in a bit of a dark space, and I felt like I'd kind of lost a piece of myself, and I sat down to just get back to the anchor of the songs and try to decide a handful to take into the studio to work on with somebody, and I got four or five songs in, and I was like, wait a second. I think I like them like this,” Townes explained.

“What if I just made the record sitting here with my dog on one microphone and really just told the truth that way? This is my first time producing an album like that, and I felt like every decision that I made really helped me strengthen my intuition again. I went from kind of that major label system to this, my leap into the great unknown of returning to being an independent artist, and that was a really scary jump for me, but it felt like every creative decision I made was like, 'Does this need harmony?' Do I think I should put a little bass on here? Every one of those decisions felt like it really strengthened my own compass again, and this record healed me in a lot of ways for that, so that's how the story of that came to be,” she added.

“My solo mission on this album”

‘The Acrobat’ saw Townes handle the production, recording and mixing simultaneously, creating a big balancing act, but one that was executed seamlessly. “I did not set out to do it that way intentionally at the front, but it just kind of happened,” Townes said when reflecting on the experience of handling all three roles.

“I really learned a lot about what I like in a mix of the warmth of how it sounds, and there's not a lot of elements on this record to mix, so it was a good learning experience for me. As long as these vocals feel present, and I want them coming in from these sides, and this is how I want the guitar to feel, it was just kind of like, 'Okay, well, let me at least get it to a place,' and I sent it to a few friends who are producers and mixers, and I was just like, 'Who do you think I should send this to to mix it?' And a couple of them were like, I think this is done. Who mixed this? And I was like, 'Me!' So I was really excited to feel their encouragement in that place, and I was like, maybe I just, this really is my solo mission on this album, and I'm grateful it stayed true to that all the way through,” Townes finished.

Despite having only released ‘The Acrobat’ in April, Townes is already planning a follow-up to her fourth studio album but is eager to have a collaborative environment in place for the development of her fifth studio album. “I feel really excited to have explored that space and learned a lot about my own instincts,” Townes said when reflecting on the experience of making ‘The Acrobat’.

“I'm excited to bring that in the room with some friends again and go, I feel stronger in my own voice, and what would that feel like in collaboration, on production, and in mixing? I went from making a record completely solo in my room to now I'm like, 'Wait a second, I kind of think I want community on this next project,' and to swing a little bit the other way, and some maybe rebellious joy of a new sonic landscape, so I've been kind of riding in that direction lately and really enjoying what that's taking shape to be, so in the early stages, but a new album is coming for sure,” she added.

“An absolute dream come true”

In recent years Townes has had the opportunity to share stages with Miranda Lambert, George Strait and Keith Urban, who went on to feature as a guitarist on her single ‘Sunshine's Free’ back in May. “That was so crazy, because honestly, this song has been in the works for a long time, and at the time, when I was initially working at it, I had this thought of wanting this song to be this embodiment of joy, and when I think about 'Ambassador of Joy' in country music, Keith Urban is who I think about,” Townes said when asked about Urban’s involvement in the song.

“You can hear him smiling when he's playing guitar, like I swear you can, and so as we got to the solo, I was sitting there going, 'I wonder what Keith Urban would do,' and at the time, he had graciously surprised me on a Zoom call, actually, with an ACM award during the pandemic, and we kept in touch. I got to open up a couple shows for him, so we'd been chatting back and forth about some of those things, and I was just like, 'Hey, I'm just gonna take a pipe dream shot here, but I have this song I'm working on, and is there any way that you might want to play guitar on this?I feel like there's something about it that I would want to hear your energy on', and he was so sweet and got back to me right away and sent some files back, and so it's a dream to have him on this song,” Townes finished.

The decision to take a chance is one that has paid dividends regularly in Townes’ career. On her ‘Train Track Worktapes’ EP, Townes released a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s legendary track ‘Landslide’, and it eventually led to Townes opening for Stevie Nicks for her show at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena in 2023 - a date that marked Nicks’ sole Canadian show on that run, making the opportunity even more special for Townes, who considers Nicks a major inspiration. But did Stevie get to listen to her take on ‘Landslide’?

“Oh, great question,” she said. “Honestly, I don't know. I didn't get to talk to her about that, but I got to watch the show, and I just stood in front of the house, like, admiring her, just like, incredible artistry is such a trailblazer in music, and I've looked up to her forever, so that was an absolute dream come true to get to open up that show.

“Hopefully we get to do more again down the road, but I just love her artistry. She told a lot of stories on that tour too, which was really cool to me, reminiscing of what it was like writing in those early days, and they did such a great job, you know, putting photos and stuff up on the screen. It's like, it's really cool to watch an artist that's really been doing it their whole life. I really admire her a lot,” Townes concluded.

A full circle moment with Shania Twain

Speaking of idols, Townes had the opportunity to meet one of her musical heroes at the age of nine. The Alberta native attended a Shania Twain concert in Edmonton in 2003 and was subsequently invited to perform on stage with the Queen of Country Pop after Twain noticed a sign that read, “Shania, can I please sing with you?" ”.

"I remember the checker plate floor and the fog of the lights and just having this feeling of, yeah, this is it. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. She lit such a fire in me that now it's my mission to keep paying forward to the next little dreamers down the line,” Townes said before reflecting on a full-circle moment that came a few years back.

“A couple of years ago, we got to open up for her back in Canada on tour. And we went back through Edmonton in the city that (it) happened almost 20 years to the day and got to sing together again. So that was a pretty crazy dream come true, a full-circle moment that I'll never forget,” Townes said. But did Twain remember singing with a nine-year-old Townes?

“I showed her a picture because this was back in the day when you couldn't bring cameras, but the people next to us who we'd never met snuck a disposable camera in their coat, and the fiddle player took it on stage. And we had this really cool reel of photos. So I did get to show it to her before the first show. I was like, Thank you for having me on this. This is such a dream. And I just need you to know, like, I just couldn't even articulate a sentence. I was like, how do you thank someone who's had that much impact on your life? And I showed her the picture, and we had a really special moment together,” a delighted Townes finished.

Tenille’s tour gets underway in Cardiff on Tuesday, September 29th and tickets are available here.