 The Music & Sound Retailer: In another interview you said you were inspired on this new album by two “very sexy” guitars you acquired. What are they, where did you get them, and [how did they] impact the album?
KT Tunstall: Well, obviously when you haven’t got any money it’s unusual to be stacking nice guitars off in the back room in your house, so it’s been a really exciting part of being able to afford some nice instruments with the success I’ve had. The first guitar didn’t touch my bank balance at all because it was actually a present from my record label and remains the singularly most fabulous present I’ve ever been given in my life. It was during the Brit Awards. [We] came up with this kind of black and white [performance] so I asked my guitar technician what the most amazing white guitar you can get is and he said it’s a Gretsch Falcon. The worry was that it was going to make me look like a midget because it’s so huge. So I tried it on and although it did make me look tiny, I just absolutely fell in love with it. With the big bodied Falcon, I had this great rhythm and blues [guitar], so I thought I should also go for a solid body that gave me a more traditional electric sound. And this guy in Germany was really, really happy to sell me this 1973 Silver Jet. I was over the moon with these two very different guitars that really give me a massive range of sounds between the two of them. I only use four guitars. I have two acoustics and two electrics, so it kind of speaks of how flexible these guitars are really.
M&SR: What are the guitars in your collection?
Tunstall: I really, really love my Gibson Dove acoustic. It’s got a fantastic breadth of sound in it. I’m a pretty aggressive rhythm player and I’m very reliant on my bottom E string a lot of the time in the more rhythmic songs. So I really need an acoustic guitar that’s got a very, very rich bottom end, as well as having the nice brightness at the top and the Dove is just really fantastic for that.
 And my backup at the moment is a Hummingbird, which is a little bit more honky and a bit more breezy, so you get a different sound out of it. But I’m very excited because Gibson America has actually made me a custom Dove, which is an Elvis Dove. It’s black with a white scratch plate. I asked for it to have stars all the way up and it looks absolutely beautiful.
The Jet and the Falcon were used a lot [on the new CD]. But I’ll always use the Dove for recording. I also have a great little acoustic guitar made by a Japanese guy for me. He made a guitar of a cherry blossom inlayed all up neck, which is in a black horse on the scratch plate, which was beautiful. And it really sounded great.
M&SR: You do some finger picking on this album. Do you consider yourself an adept finger picker?
Tunstall: I actually started off as a finger picker and I didn’t use a pick to strum for a long time. I would just strum with just my bare fingers because I found it really difficult to use a pick at first. I started on a Spanish guitar; on a nylon string guitar. And as much as I enjoyed the finger picking style, I always wanted to make more noise than that really. But I’ll never stop enjoying picking.
M&SR: What guitar are you holding on the cover of the CD?
Tunstall: It’s actually a homemade [Firebird]. That’s not actually a real guitar. [In my music video, I play a] Gibson Firebird that’s covered with a mirror ball. But I was doing [the cover] shoot a few weeks prior to the album and I wanted to get a couple of props made. The guy who made it basically must have traced the outline of the guitar, meaning it was half an inch to an inch wider than an actual Firebird and so it just came out huge. But it looked fantastic. All the tuning pegs are actually whiskey decanter tops and the strings are necklaces and all sorts of stuff, so it was a really amazing piece of work. It looks great [and] I now have two fantastically sparkly guitars.
M&SR: How did you get started playing music? Did you feel that there was a lack of female role models?
Tunstall: It all started for me with just a very innate fascination with instruments. So I asked my parents for a piano by the time I was 6 and was just really obsessed with anything I could play. And then it was when I was 15 when my dad got satellite television and I would just be glued to MTV, and there were such amazing female role models [like] Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Debbie Harry, and Annie Lennox. I was very sure about which women in music I aspired to be, and most of the time it was musicians who I got the feeling really approached their music as musicians first and as women second almost. And certainly, I feel that the female presence in contemporary music is a lot healthier than it has been now. I think that was the thing that British music was certainly missing. I didn’t want to be part of that because it’s so easy as a female because there are so few females compared to guys that you just get immediately put in a bag, which is really frustrating.
M&SR: Do you find retailers open to you as a female player?
Tunstall: Thankfully, if I go into a guitar shop now I get full-tilt respect from the boys behind the counter because apparently it’s very sexy having a girl playing guitar, so it seems to be enjoyed greatly. I think the important thing I find with people’s attitudes toward me as a musician is I play and I think it’s been noticeable that I’m treated as a player—a musician—which is really important to me.
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