KT Tunstall at the Knitting Factory on Thursday, November 4th
Tonight was KT Tunstall’s first time in Spokane and she loves our park, Riverfront Park that is. All the way from Scotland she had the Knitting Factory dancing and clapping throughout the night. Her latest album is called Tiger Suit, and fitting the name she had a super cool backdrop of a girl underneath a big tiger head, like she was inside the tiger mouth. The floor wasn’t super packed so KT told the crowd they had no excuse there was plenty of room to dance.
For the first three songs KT had a different guitar for each song. Half of the guitars were twice her size too! Plus, her guitars alone were just a fraction of the full size band that was on stage! The stage was full of cool instruments and people. KT Tunstall called her band the alt-pop rock Spice Girls. It was funny when she was introducing the band she would say their full names but in-between their first and last put a rockstars name in like Ziggy Stardust. It was hilarious! One of the gentlemen in her band even spoke a little Welsh for us after she introduced him! There were a lot of instruments on stage from an orange sparkly drum set to an awesome Melodica. A Melodica is a small keyboard that you blow into while you play it, funny looking but it is growing more and more popular. A surprising thing I learned tonight was that KT loops her music on stage. She loops whistles and chords and can be a one gal band when she wants. It’s so cool to see an artist loop music live it leaves little room for mistakes.
KT had great little stories for a lot of the songs she played which is always one of the best perks about a live show. We did get to hear a lot of tunes off Tiger Suit and of course songs from her other albums. She asked the crowd if anyone recently has broken up with their partner, and a lot of the crowd hollered. She was surprised, quite a lot she said. She then went in to tell us how she decided to write a positive break up song verses a negative one because there were so many of them. I thought that was a good way to look at a breakup. She also told the crowd how when she toured the world she fell in love with the arctic and the Northern Lights and she wrote a song about it as well! She asked us to go back in time, and asked us where were we in the 2000’s and went into “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree.” Which they added an awesome trumpet, kazoo solo too, KT was on kazoo.
I was kind of skeptic going into the show, I don’t know why either, because I had a great time and loved every song I heard. We did have to duck out a bit early to run to the A Club to catch two other bands but if it wasn’t for that I would have stayed all night. KT is a sassy badass chick that has a way with words and one hell of an accent!
Photos courtesy of Matt Auclair.
