Blame it on “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree,” then “Suddenly I See” — the songs that made KT Tunstall the pop star she never wanted to be.
Recorded live on England’s Later with … Jules Holland with the Scottish singer-songwriter singing, playing guitar, tambourine and a loop pedal, “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” triggered Tunstall’s 2005 nomination for the Mercury Prize, England’s highest musical award, and was named Track of the Year by Q magazine.
With “Suddenly I See” heading up the UK and U.S. charts, and “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” earning a Grammy nomination, Tunstall’s debut album “Eye of the Telescope” became a global smash by selling more than two million albums.
“I’m just a terrible pop star,” Tunstall said in a late-April phone interview. “I’m a pretty good indie musician, but I’m really not built to be a pop star. Pop meaning popular. Maybe the difference is in the desire, the thing that gets you up in the morning wanting to do it. Mine was never fame and making money. Mine was playing and making stuff.”
“Then I have this wildly successful album that pushes me into being a pop star,” she continued. “I’m eternally grateful for it. It gave me an amazing adventure. But it wasn’t me.”
“I don’t just . . . “
The grind of touring, playing the same songs night after night in venues that all look the same and never getting a chance to experience the places where she would play took its toll on Tunstall, and she began scaling back — releasing albums every three or four years, touring behind them, then taking time off to pursue other interests.
Moving from Los Angeles to Santa Fe, Tunstall has written musicals, contributed to children’s records and movie soundtracks. And she can now do solo acoustic tours rather than just hit the road with a band.
“It’s wonderful,” she said. “You feel like you’re going to die with so much happiness. You get to find your creativity and your craft in so many things. I should get T-shirts made that say ‘I don’t just. …’ It really feels like heaven.”
Getting a handle on hearing loss
Tunstall also got slowed by gradual loss of hearing in her left ear, which began in 2008. A decade later, Tunstall went deaf in the ear.
“I went deaf halfway through a tour and ended up holed up in the meatpacking district of New York for two weeks, thankfully with a view of the Hudson [River],” she recalled. “That helped with my tremendous vertigo. That was the worst part of it. I basically felt [like] I’d drank two bottles of tequila all the time.”
It was shocking, Tunstall said, when she learned her hearing wouldn’t come back. But she said she took her doctor’s advice to “get out and live your life.”
“I nearly got run over five times for not hearing something from my left side,” she said. “After two or three weeks, I did my first show. It was the Killington Women’s Downhill Ski Championships. It went fine. It was good.”
Another show in Nashville proved to Tunstall that she could continue to have a musical career.
“The fact I knew in my mind I was able to play a show as well as ever gave me hope and confidence,” Tunstall said. “I can do everything anybody else can do, only in mono. And, as musician friends tell me, all the best records are in mono.”
Going Nuts
Nut, Tunstall’s new album, isn’t in mono. It’s a finely wrought stereo conclusion to an album trilogy based on soul, body and mind. She’s fresh off a UK and European tour with a band where she played Nut in its entirety, along with about 10 of her best-known songs.
“It was interesting playing Nut with the band,” she said. “Nut is about the mind. I thought it might be the most nerdy of the three and it turned out to be the most touching and emotional of all. That was a real surprise. People were emotionally engaging with the songs.”
“We played ‘Out of Touch’ as the first encore,” she continued. “It’s my positive pandemic song, people were on their feet and clapping in the same way as for ‘Blue House and the Cherry Tree.’ I was flabbergasted. That gives a newfound confidence in stripping them back and playing them acoustically on this solo tour.”
She won’t be playing all the songs from Nut on her current solo tour. But some will be in the set list, which she was honing at the time we talked last month.
“I’ve got to choose carefully,” she said. “One of my great prides in life is I’ve never put anything out that I didn’t think was good. But some songs are built to come alive in the studio and some are more fitted to acoustic, solo.”
Regardless of the songs she chooses, the show, she said, will be more fun for her than a band performance.
“It’s funny, people often think it’s harder to do a solo show,” she said. “But it’s easier. You’re not tied to anything. You can make mistakes and work them into the show. I’ve been thinking recently about how good it would be to go out on a tour with just a guitar. When you have a band, loops and all that, there’s a chance they will become a crutch. I want to go out where it’s my voice and the song. That’s what I’ll be doing. I think I’ll love it.”
KT Tunstall performs on Sunday, June 4, at 8 p.m. at Ventura Music Hall, 1888 E. Thompson Blvd., Ventura. For tickets and more information, call 805-667-8802 or visit www.venturamusichall.com.