Photo: Submitted
Tenille Townes delivered a project unlike ever before on Friday (April 10).
The Canadian-born country artist, 32, wholeheartedly dove into the bold creative process of writing and recording her third album, The Acrobat, plus producing it from the spare room of her house (with “my sweet dog,” Sam, by her side). Townes said in a recent conversation with iHeartCountry, “it was kind of like the music led me to doing it this way. I don’t think I’d have sat down and been like, ‘I’m going to produce this whole record myself.’ But it just grew into that, and it became this return to creative autonomy that I really think I needed in this season right now.”
Townes wrote The Acrobat in a season “of profound personal and professional transition,” per a press release announcing the album’s debut. The sharp-witted singer-songwriter delved into people-pleasing patterns and more as she examined changes in her life, and it resulted in an intimate collection of songs that an “breathe, and be in their raw and vulnerable state,” on the album with a live feel.
“I feel really proud of it,” Townes told iHeartCountry. “I think it’s an accurate timestamp of a lot of the emotional processing and healing that I was doing in this time, a lot of things I was going through personally, and also just career shifts and taking things back into my own hands, and taking this leap as an independent artist again. I feel like this music is really reflective of what that felt like for me. …I actually feel really glad that I just let it be real, and so far, I’ve just been thrilled to get to have more people hearing this and kind of let them into that really personal space that I was in.”
“This snapshot’s exciting to me because it is still really fresh. I just finished recording this a few months ago,” she continued. “It feels like the closest timeline of, ‘OK, I made this thing and I want to share it.’ And that’s what’s really cool to me about the freedom of this era, too, is just being able to do that and have it be an accurate representation of the window that I’m in. …I think art is so funny like that. We’re never the same person one day to the next. Every cell in our body is constantly evolving, growing and changing. I think art does a really good job of making that stand still for a second so you can glance back and see who you were on the way there. I feel really proud of this season of music for that window.”
Townes set the stage for The Acrobat when she first released the title track, a full circle collaboration with friend and longtime “songwriting hero” Lori McKenna, and “enabling,” a “therapeutic” song that addressed boundaries in relationships and patterns of “self-abandonment.” Townes said “a big theme” in The Acrobat has been “the journey back to myself, and the different growing pains in that,” and she’s felt encouraged by audiences resonating with her music.
“It’s the most incredible thing to me. That is literally the gift of music,” Townes said of the connection with others. “My mission in creating songs is always to help somebody feel less alone, and creating those songs helps me feel less alone, too. So, it’s like a two-way street. That community element of music, to me, that’s the driving force. That’s the part I love the most, is how, even though we all have different movies in our heads of specific details of what certain experiences or certain songs make us think about in our lives, the thread of the emotion is the same, and that’s something we can all hold onto together. That’s pretty powerful to me. I love that. …I love any opportunity to come together with that community of people in the same space and literally feel that thread tangibly in a room. It’s my favorite place to be.”
Given that Townes worked on The Acrobat from her own home, it’s fitting that she re-created her living room as the set for her headlining tour. On Thursday evening (April 9), the “ordinary love song” artist brought her “Living Room Tour” to Nashville, Tennessee, hosting a special album release show supporting Crossroads Campus. The local non-profit organization offers safe housing for young adults experiencing homelessness, and aims to find forever homes for dogs and cats, Townes shared. She shared information about Crossroads and stories behind the tracks on her newest project during the intimate, storytelling show. Surprise guests included McKenna, Caylee Hammack, Mae Estes, opening artist Corrina, and more. Townes said on the first day of her tour, “I’m nervous to do these songs, just standing up there on my own, but I’m also just really grateful for the opportunity to do that in this season of music. It all feels really connected to me. …(I’m) feeling more like myself these days, and I’m excited to come together with everybody for these shows.”
“I feel hopeful, and I feel like the sense of peace that I think I’m just doing what creatively feels inspiring and right for me,” Townes said as she looked ahead to her newest chapter. “And just feeling that return to my intuition again is such a gift. So, I feel really hopeful that this music could maybe help somebody else feel less alone in the process of standing on their own two feet again, too, and that just makes me so excited to think about.”
Find The Acrobat on iHeartRadio here. Listen to the opening track, “ordinary love song,” below.