Create your own story to go along with the stunning artwork by Robin Footit inside the booklet of KT's new album Drastic Fantastic. Have fun, be creative, and share your stories with your friends.
KT Tunstall will be featured in a special sneak preview premiere on Ovation TV of "Live from the Artists Den," the innovative new weekly music series featuring acclaimed artists performing in extraordinary settings, Sunday, January 13 (8-9 p.m. ET/PT).
The episode was filmed at a private Artists Den concert July 9, 2007 at the fully restored, early 20th Century Prince George Ballroom in Manhattan. KT Tunstall performed under the sculpted, neo-Renaissance ceiling with a five-piece band, where she revisited hits such as "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" and "Suddenly I See" from Eye to the Telescope, while also giving fans an early look at songs from Drastic Fantastic.
After the special sneak preview of "KT Tunstall: Live from the Artists Den" on January 13, an encore presentation of the episode on Thursday, January 17 (8-9 p.m. ET/PT) will launch the series in its regular weekly time period.
Special Blue Room Webcast Performance
Tune in inside the blue room for a special webcast performance with KT Tunstall featuring songs from her latest album, "Drastic Fantastic" plus enter to win a trip for two to see KT on her upcoming 2008 tour.
For all the great music access plus Friday night's inside the blue room webcast special with KT Tunstall, step into the blue room.
Exclusive Live Ep from UK Tour - Out Now!
KT has chosen her favourite four tracks from the recent UK Tour in October, and put it all together on one EP, which is now available.
The EP features a live recording of the current single gracing your radio 'Saving My Face' which is out now.
Also, the announcement has just been made that she will be back on the road in the UK during April in 2008. Tickets for these shows are available from 23rd November.
“The last three years have changed me as an artist,” says KT Tunstall. “My bar has been raised. I’ve realized what’s possible through making an album, touring behind it with a band, seeing how that album can turn into something else on stage, and how we can actually make it better.”
It’s hard to imagine how the Scottish-born singer-songwriter, known to her family as Kate, could do any better. Within six months of its February 2006 re-release, ‘Eye to the Telescope’, Tunstall’s gritty, soulful debut, was certified gold in the U.S., and her music — a provocative sonic mesh of heartfelt pop, rootsy electric blues, and left-field alt-folk — became omnipresent all over radio, television, movies, and the Internet. Thanks to the multi-media exposure of its three singles (the Grammy-Award nominated “Black Horse the Cherry Tree,” “Suddenly I See,” and “Other Side of the World”) ‘Eye’ is now certified platinum in the U.S. and quintuple platinum in the U.K., with worldwide sales exceeding 3.5 million copies.
With that kind of success, what does this 31-year-old, who has been hailed as “a folk-rock goddess” by Rolling Stone, do next? “You can’t allow success to become an albatross,” she says. “It’s easy to be too frightened to move on, but you can’t just go out and slavishly recreate what people liked.”
That said, Tunstall’s new album, ‘Drastic Fantastic’, due from Virgin Records on September 18th, 2007, is sure to be something people like. Chock full of powerful lyrics and bold, colorful melodies, the album shows Tunstall’s growth as both a songwriter and a musician. “I wanted to be braver,” she says of her mindset while writing and recording the album. “I wanted to push the musicality. I really enjoyed playing lead guitar for the first time, as well as piano, Rhodes, and ukulele. Also, with the first album, I was so inexperienced singing in a studio that I couldn’t quite get my live voice into the booth. But after three years of touring, I’m better able to tap into whatever underground stream it is inside that provides that magical lucidity. For the first time, being in the studio was like being on another stage.”
A collection of thumping pop songs and intimate, often mysterious ballads, ‘Drastic Fantastic’ has many highlights, including the rollicking “Saving My Face,” (“about 50-year-old women trying to look like teenagers”), the delicate, jazz-inflected “Someday Soon,” the quietly intimate “Beauty Of Uncertainty,” and the frisky pop gem “I Don’t Want You Now,” destined to be a hands-in-the-air live favorite. “I definitely found my inner folk-punk on that one,” she says.
As for the album’s title, it popped into Tunstall’s head as she was writing in her journal on an airplane. “I’d been blown away by the film Sin City; I loved how [creator] Frank Miller’s imagery came to life,” she says. “It made me think how doing this for a living is such a comic-book existence. It’s a bit like the X-Men minus the actual super powers. You’re flying everywhere, you’re down, you’re thrown around, and you’re exhausted to the point where you can’t stand up or speak. It’s not normal. ‘Drastic Fantastic’ sounded like the name of my comic-book life.”
Tunstall knows a lot about peculiar journeys. She grew up in the university town of St. Andrews on Scotland’s east coast, the daughter of a grammar school teacher and a physicist. The family would often take off to go camping or hill walking, and consequently young Kate was instilled with a deep-rooted attachment to landscape and travel. There wasn’t much music in the Tunstall household; her younger brother is deaf and having the stereo or TV on made it difficult for him to join in conversations. Tunstall thinks that the lack of music in her childhood “stopped me being cornered by anything. If your parents only listen to jazz or folk or something, you’re like one of those trees you see in botanic gardens that have wire frames on them – you grow into that shape. But I didn’t have influences to embrace or kick against.”
By age 16, Tunstall had fallen in with a group of local musicians and spent the next few years learning about folk music, living in cottages, scraping a living, and keeping warm by strumming her acoustic guitar extra-vigorously. “It was a very formative time for me,” she says. “Eyes and heart wide open. I learnt about being a musician.” Tunstall’s musical journey eventually took her to Edinburgh, where she hosted her own acoustic nights, dubbed Acoustic Extravaganza (from which she took the title of her 2006 CD/DVD ‘KT Tunstall’s Acoustic Extravaganza’). Finally, after deciding that opportunities for a career in music were passing her by, she moved to London.
Tunstall feels her adopted hometown has “seeped under the door of ‘Drastic Fantastic’.” The album’s first single, “Hold On,” — a thumping hoedown with a fat, ferocious beat that was inspired by the dancehall rhythms pumping out of the car windows in Tunstall’s Northwest London neighborhood. It took Tunstall and her producer Steve Osborne —with whom she also collaborated on ‘Eye to the Telescope’ and ‘Acoustic Extravaganza’ — five months to get the tune right. “We had to fix it or it could have ended up sounding like the cheesy R&B,” she says. The lyrics — “Hold on to what you've been given lately / Because the world will turn if you’re ready or not” — were inspired by Bob Marley’s “Judge Not.”
“The song is saying ‘Don’t waste your time pointing at me; look at what you do —maybe you want to spend less time giving me shit,’” Tunstall explains. “It was about an old relationship I was in. When you come out of something difficult, it’s always empowering to keep the parts that have actually helped you move on, rather than that stuff that’s made you feel low about yourself. That’s very me. I’m always looking for that shaft of light in a bad situation.”
For more information about KT, video, audio, and more, visit www.KTTunstall.com
Special Thanks to Barrie Thompson for Homepage Photo
** PLEASE NOTE **
<< KT's top 8 (apart from Lauren who works for KT) is made up of her message board moderators on kttunstall.com and although they love people thinking they are part of KT's band and could probably shred a good guitar riff, they will probably not accept random friend requests and messages from people >>
Hi KT, thanks for the add & your support. We now have our first demos up on MySpace. Please pop along have a listen and leave a comment,Hope to see you at Eden Project, Cheers, Paul.
Yes Indeed what an Awesome show last night in LouiSville:) And an Outstanding cast of Musicians you had with you also, Great Show! One of the best performances Ive been to, Ill see you again!
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KT, LOVED the show tonight in Louisville!!! I had FRONT ROW CENTER seat and had a GREAT time!!! Thank you for the music and for having fun with it...not just all business as usual as some bands seem to get to. Dan.
<span style='font-size:20px; font-weight:bold'>Hey KT Tunstall, I just bought you as my PET! <a href='http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=361263053'><span style='font-size:larger;'>Click here</span></a> to find out how much I think you're $$WORTH$$!</span><br/><br/><a href='http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=361263053'><img src='http://cdn1.slicezero.com/oyf_prod/images/ffs_money2_myspace.gif' border='0' /></a><br/>
LOL I thought this was funny!<br /><br />
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