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KT TUNSTALL TOURS THE WORLD WITH SHURE

Scottish singer/songwriter joins the masses of true blue Shure endorsers

 

NILES, IL — It’s hard to turn on a radio, watch TV or even wait in line at a coffee shop and not hear a hit song from Scottish singer/songwriter KT Tunstall’s debut Eye To The Telescope. According to her, it didn’t all happen overnight, and it took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to come this far. In her eyes, she’s still on the way up, but one thing has never changed, her choice in microphones.

 

“I’ve always used an SM58, without a doubt. I mean that’s like the classic microphone,” says Tunstall. “When you get onstage and you’re singing into an SM58, you’re like, ‘Yes, I’m a singer now!’ It’s just what I’m used to, it’s what I’ve used from day one. If I’d be playing in coffee shops and stuff, I’d just take one of those with me and it’s so reliable.”

 

KT Tunstall’s debut release, Eye To The Telescope, moves from mellow to serious to rockin’ sing-along. Each track has a story to tell, which may not always appear on the surface, but every listener interprets their own meanings from Tunstall’s compositions. The album took about five weeks to record, and every song was a fresh idea.

 

“I think the oldest song was probably a year or two years old, and it was important to me not to just grave-dig the last ten years of songwriting,” recalls Tunstall. “Maybe I’ll go back to it at some point, but as an introduction to who I was as a singer when I released the record, I thought to myself, ‘I really want this to mean something’.”

 

Tunstall brings a unique aspect to performing, whether it be at a venue or a radio station promo, she can become a one-woman band. With the help of a delay/looper pedal, Tunstall enables herself to layer multitrack percussion, rhythm guitar and background vocals right before the listener’s eyes and ears. Besides her trusty SM58 for vocals, Tunstall also monitors her performance with a PSM 700. The band is also pretty well equipped with Shure gear, with a Beta 52A on kick drum, SM57 on snare, KSM44 on overheads, and SM57 on guitar amp.  

                            

There is a unique preparation that KT Tunstall must always perform when it comes to readying an SM58 for the stage, and that’s removing the foam from the windscreen and stretching it over the outside of the mic’s capsule.

 

“Well, I’ll tell you, that’s a funny story,” comments Tunstall. “First of all, I jump around like a maniac when I’m playing, and I’m constantly stomping my feet. If you’re playing on a wooden stage, the mic bounces and just starts coming at you. I can’t count  the number of times I’ve been clocked in the teeth by the mic. That is really—pardon the pun—a sure way of  eventually losing a front tooth. That’s why we ended up taking the little foam cover that’s inside the mic capsule and stretching it over the outside. There’s something quite glam about having a cover on your microphone, and I’m liking it a lot.”