One For the road
The singer-songwriter reflects on backstage cuisine and how finding the correct earplugs changed her life…
What was the first gig you played and how did it go?
“The first gig ever I booked for myself when I was just 16 turning 17. I started playing guitar and writing songs at about 15 and a year later I wanted to put a gig on. I don’t know what had made me want to do the show; it was compulsion to share what I’d written. They said that because I was underage I could go into one of their back rooms and take just a few friends in there at seven o’clock or six or something. One of my friends, Siobahn, worked at the local woollen mill and she worked with King Creosote, aka Kenny Anderson, who was working in the woollen mill as well. He ended up coming along and pretty much at the end of that gig asked me to join his band. So it went extremely well and I ended up jumping into touring straight away because they were driving around Scotland in a van. It was like following the white rabbit, that one, and absolutely down the rabbit hole into a completely different life.”
Describe your current stage rig…
“I’m currently lucky enough to be touring with a band, so I don’t really need to have my big loop pedal-rig set up when I’ve got a band. I just use the loop pedal and not all the other shenanigans that I usually use. I’m playing Supro electrics and my old Gibson acoustic, swapping out for a Taylor acoustic and I’ve got a fantastic combo, a Supro Statesman, and also the Supro drive and tremolo pedals. The combo sounds superb – they’ve really got it going on with their combos.”
What’s on your rider?
“My rider’s pathetic. I totally changed my diet and so I basically try not to eat shite, and riders are historically just a list of shite. The problem is that if there’s a mound of crisps and chocolate sitting in front of you, it’s more difficult. It’s the daytime drug of musicians. I need to try and eat some vegetables and so I’ve got crudités on my rider, I’ve got carrots, broccoli and celery. There’s hummus and peanut or cashew butter and a lemon. Then I’ve got loads of nuts and avocados on there.
“We got to whatever we were doing last week and the avocados – you could have built a house with them. They were the most solid, inedible, hard things you’ve ever felt in your life. My drummer texted me a week later and said,‘By the way, the avocados are ready!’”
What non-musical item couldn’t you do without on tour?
“Ear plugs. Musicians train to tune our ears and be much more analytical listeners and I think having very analytical and tuned ears, I find, makes life a little bit more complicated because you just can’t handle certain sounds. You’re sensitive to things like high frequencies that are coming out of air conditioning units and things like that. So I find it very hard to get to sleep, especially if there’s any noise, which there always is on a bus. The only ones I can use are the yellow construction ear plugs; anything else can fuck off, it doesn’t work. I pop them in and all I can hear is a bit of tinnitus in the left ear and I’m off to sleep.”
What’s your best tip for getting the audience on your side?
“Talking to them and engaging with them. I think there are some bands who manage to do that very well without actually engaging, but I think that’s extremely rare. I think the audience will always have an enriched experience if you actually speak to them. My solo shows have become a ridiculous evening where I’m talking almost as much as I’m playing.”
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen on tour?
“We were driving through Oregon and there was this amazing billboard. It was a picture of a dude in a tool belt and a hard hat and he was kneeling. Behind him was this very happy looking housewife with her two or three daughters and they’re all looking very satisfied, too. All it said on the top was there was a phone number and it said,‘Hire A Husband’. I thought,‘Wow, that’s
amazing. I wonder what you can get for that… I wonder what the service list is?’”
What’s the nearest you’ve come to a Spinal Tap moment on tour?
“I think the most Spinal Tap thing that’s happened was a gig in Milan and there was this weird little spiral staircase on the side of the stage that went up into the lighting rig. Obviously, one of the house crew had let one of their friends go up there to watch the gig and we didn’t know anyone was up there. At the end of the show the lights come down and the guys had left the stage and it was completely pitch black and I suddenly got grabbed by this 6ft 4in Italian guy, on stage, in the dark. I always thought that I’d be this ninja if anyone tried to catch me and it turned out that I was like a sparrow with a broken wing and I was just going,‘Waaaaa ah !’ And this guy was shaking me going,‘Play another song, KT, play another song!’ Security finally made it on stage and prized me free. He wrestled free of security and he was so drunk that he just ran off the front of the stage and landed on his face and got taken away in an ambulance. It was very strange.” KT Tunstall’s latest album, Wax, is out now on Jaydone www.kttunstall.com