Canadian singer-songwriter Tenille Townes has built a reputation as one of country and Americana’s most emotionally articulate voices, blending vivid storytelling with a disarming honesty that cuts straight to the core. Since breaking through with her acclaimed debut ‘The Lemonade Stand,' Townes has consistently explored themes of empathy, resilience and human connection, earning widespread respect both as an artist and a songwriter. Whether writing about heartbreak, small-town life or the quiet moments that shape us, her music has always carried a sense of purpose: songs that don’t just reflect life, but try to understand it.
With her powerful new album ‘The Acrobat,' Townes enters a new chapter defined by independence, introspection and creative renewal. Stepping away from the traditional label system, she has re-centred herself both personally and professionally, creating a body of work that feels raw, cathartic and deeply intentional. Written in part alongside songwriting legend Lori McKenna, the album captures an artist reconnecting with her instincts and rediscovering her true north, embracing vulnerability not as a weakness but as a strength. It’s a record that doesn’t just document change: it lives inside it, marking a bold and quietly transformative moment in her career. We caught up with her to talk all about it.
It’s great to catch up again. This album feels like such a personal and hands-on project: you’ve written, produced, played and even mixed so much of it yourself. Of all those roles, which challenged you the most?
I think production, for sure. That was something completely new for me in this way. I hadn’t explored it like that before. In a strange way, the music kind of tricked me into making this record. I was in a bit of a darker place to begin with, feeling a little lost and asking myself, “What am I doing next?”
So I tried to take it one step at a time. I thought, “What if I just make simple guitar-and-vocal versions of the songs I want to take into the studio next? What if I just tune out all the noise and get back to the truth underneath?” I made four or five of those, and then I had this moment of thinking, “Wait… what if the record is this? What if I just capture these performances as they are?”
That’s when it shifted into something much bigger. I started asking myself, “Could I actually make this on my own?” And in doing that, it became this really healing process. Every decision, whether it was adding a bass line, a harmony, or leaving something stripped back, helped rebuild my trust in my own instincts. It was challenging, but also really freeing. My inner critic was so exhausted at that point that it kind of stepped aside and let me finish the project, which was a gift.
Q: You mentioned creative autonomy there, which feels like a key theme of this record. Looking back, was there a moment where you realised you’d drifted away from trusting your own instincts?
I don’t think there was one clear moment. It happened gradually over time. I was surrounded by such an incredible community, people who believed in me and wanted the best for the music, and I had a really positive experience within that system.
But somewhere along the way, I think I started to lose little pieces of myself. I was also dealing with some personal things in relationships, and I think that fed into a kind of people-pleasing tendency. Eventually, it forced me to face that head-on.
There was definitely a loneliness in that, but it also became the exact space I needed to rediscover my voice. It wasn’t like I suddenly realised, “Oh, I’m lost.” It was more subtle than that: just a slow drifting. But coming out the other side of it now feels really grounding.
It sounds like that whole experience of making this record was incredibly cathartic for you, both personally and creatively. Now that you’ve come through the other side of it and found that sense of clarity and freedom again, how do you feel it’s going to shape the way you approach songwriting going forward?
I think the biggest thing it’s given me is a sense of freedom, and not just creatively, but emotionally as well. I feel like I’ve come through the other side of that loneliness now, and there’s this real lightness to being able to say, “Wait, I can actually do whatever I want with this.”
For a while, I genuinely didn’t know what that looked like. I had to sit in that uncertainty for a bit and let it be uncomfortable. But now that I’m starting to find my footing again, it feels really exciting. I think it’s going to change not just what I write about, but how I approach the whole process.
One of the biggest shifts is that I don’t feel the same pressure to hold things back anymore. In the past, there might have been more of a sense of, “Okay, how does this fit into the bigger plan? When should this come out?” And now it feels a lot more like, “I love this song, I just wrote it, I want to share it.” There’s something really present and alive about that approach that I’m excited to lean into.
I also think it’s deepened my trust in my instincts. Going through the process of making this record on my own, making all those little decisions, following my gut, and seeing it come together, it’s reminded me that I do know what I’m doing, even when I feel unsure. And that’s a really powerful thing to carry forward into future writing sessions.
So I think going forward, the songs will come from a place that feels a little more open, a little more honest, and a little less filtered. I want to keep chasing that feeling of just being connected to what I’m creating in the moment, and not overthinking where it’s supposed to live. That’s where the magic felt like it happened on this record, and I want to stay as close to that as I can.
Is that what ‘Sunshine’s Free’ represents? Almost a line in the sand, a step into whatever comes next?
I think it really does feel like that. It feels like a bit of a turning point, not in a dramatic, “everything changes overnight” kind of way, but more like an internal shift where I’m allowing myself to follow what feels true in the moment, even if it doesn’t make perfect sense on paper.
I think a past version of me might have hesitated. I might have overthought it and gone, “Okay, I’ve just put out this very stripped-back, acoustic record, is it too much of a jump to now release something that’s more produced, more upbeat, more immediate?” And now I just don’t feel that pressure in the same way. It’s more like, “This is where I am today, this is what I’m feeling, so this is what I’m going to share.”
‘Sunshine’s Free’ feels like the first step into that mindset. It’s lighter in a lot of ways, but it’s also rooted in something real: this idea of being present and actually noticing the joy that’s already around you. And I think that message comes from having gone through the heavier, more introspective parts of making this record.
So yeah, it does feel like a line in the sand in some ways, but also an open door. It’s me saying, “I’m not going to box myself into one version of who I am creatively.” I can make something really intimate and raw, and then I can turn around and make something that feels bright and expansive, and both of those things are equally honest.
That’s the exciting part for me now: just allowing the music to move as I move, and trusting that wherever it goes next is exactly where it’s supposed to go.
You also worked closely with Lori McKenna on this project. What did you take from that experience?
She’s just the best. Truly my songwriting hero. The first time I ever came to Nashville, my dad and I somehow got tickets to see her at The Bluebird, and I remember thinking, “This is it. This is what I want to do.”
Years later, I’m sitting in a room writing with her, thinking, “How is this real?” She’s become such a wonderful mentor and friend, and she’s been quietly cheerleading this record for a long time. I’d send her these little work tapes I was making at home, and she kept saying, “I want a record of these.”
So when I finally committed to making the album, I asked her if she’d sing on one of the songs, and she was so gracious about it. I think the biggest thing I learned from her is not to get in the way of the song, to let things be simple, even ordinary, and trust that honesty is the gift.
This record feels like a return to your early work in some ways. Almost a continuation of those original work tapes rather than something like ‘The Lemonade Stand.'
Yeah, I think that’s a really fair way of looking at it. It does feel like a return in a lot of ways, almost like reconnecting with the very first way I ever made and shared music.
Those early work tapes were literally just me and a guitar, capturing a moment as honestly as I could. There wasn’t a lot of overthinking, there wasn’t a big production around it, it was just, “Here’s the song, here’s how it feels right now.” And I think somewhere along the way, as things grew and evolved, I got further away from that simplicity.
With this record, it felt really important to come back to that starting point. Not in a way that ignores everything I’ve learned since, but in a way that reconnects with the core of why I started doing this in the first place. Picking up a guitar, sitting in a room, and telling the truth: that’s always been the foundation for me.
I think what’s different now is that I’m bringing everything I’ve experienced over the last decade into that space. So it might sound like those early work tapes in terms of how it’s captured, the intimacy, the sparseness, the immediacy, but emotionally, it’s coming from a much deeper, more lived-in place.
And honestly, it felt really grounding to make something like this again. It reminded me that no matter how much things evolve production-wise or career-wise, that stripped-back version of how I create is always going to be part of my DNA. It’s not one or the other. I can still go out and make bigger, more produced records, but this acoustic, honest approach will always be in the mix for me.
So yeah, it does feel like a continuation of those early tapes, but maybe a more fully realised version of them, shaped by everything that’s happened since.
One of the standout songs for me is ‘Enabling’. Who were you singing to on that one?
That one is definitely one of the more personal songs on the record. I think when I was writing it, I was singing to a few different people from my past, but more than anything, I was really singing to a pattern that I’d found myself in.
It came from a very specific moment. I remember being in a parking lot with someone I cared about, and they were apologising to me for something that had happened. And I had this strange, almost out-of-body experience where I could hear myself saying, “It’s okay, don’t worry about it,” and at the same time, another part of me was going, “Wait a second… is it okay? Why do I keep doing this?”
It was like I caught myself in the act of dismissing my own feelings to keep the peace, and that was a bit of a wake-up call. I realised that I’d been doing that for a long time: smoothing things over, making things easier for other people, even if it meant losing parts of myself in the process.
So ‘enabling' really became a way of unpacking that. It’s me looking back at those relationships, those versions of myself, and trying to understand why I kept falling into that dynamic. And also, starting to recognise that love isn’t supposed to cost you who you are. That was a hard lesson to learn, and honestly, it’s something I’m still learning.
I think that’s why the song feels so raw to me. It’s not just about one person, it’s about a pattern, a behaviour, a way of relating that I had to really sit with and examine. And writing it was a way of beginning to draw a line for myself, to say, “I deserve to show up fully in this, too.” So yeah, it’s definitely one of those songs that holds a lot of weight for me, but I also think that’s what makes it feel honest.
And ‘We Could Use a Little More’ feels like it zooms out to something bigger. What sparked that song?
That song definitely came from a different place than a lot of the others on the record. While so much of the album is quite inward-looking and personal, ‘we could use a little more' felt like a moment where I just couldn’t ignore what was happening around me anymore.
I remember being near the end of making the record and just feeling really overwhelmed by the noise of everything, the constant headlines, the conversations, the way it felt like there was always something trying to divide people into sides. It started to feel like we were being pulled further and further apart, and that really weighed on me.
At the same time, I’ve always believed that at our core, we’re made of something much more connective than that. There’s a kindness, a compassion, a shared humanity that exists underneath all the noise, and I think I was just really craving more of that: both in my own life and in the world at large. Songwriting has always been how I try to process those feelings, because I don’t always know how to articulate them in conversation. So I picked up my guitar and just started trying to make sense of it, asking questions like, “Why does it feel like this? Why are we hurting each other this way? What are we missing?”
And the answer I kept coming back to was pretty simple: we could just use a little more love, a little more understanding, a little more grace with each other. It’s not a complicated idea, but sometimes those are the ones that feel the most urgent.
It ended up being the last song I wrote for the record, and in a way, it felt like an important piece of the puzzle, like I couldn’t finish the album without saying that out loud. It’s me stepping outside of my own story for a second and just acknowledging the world we’re all living in, and the hope that maybe we can meet each other a little more gently in it.
You’ve made the decision to step away from the traditional label system and go independent with this project, which is never a small or easy choice for any artist, especially at a point in your career where you’d already built momentum within that structure. Looking back on that transition now, were there ever moments during the making of this record where you questioned whether you’d made the right call, or was the process itself so creatively liberating that it removed any sense of doubt?
Honestly, I don’t think I really had the space to question it in that way while I was in the middle of making the record. It wasn’t so much a case of sitting there thinking, “Was this the right or wrong decision?” it was more like, “Okay… this is where I am now. How do I move forward? How do I create again?”
There wasn’t really a sense of going back. That door had closed, so the focus shifted pretty quickly into, “What do I do with this moment?” And I think a lot of the doubt I was wrestling with wasn’t actually about the decision to go independent: it was more personal than that. It was more about questioning myself. Like, “Am I wired for this version of being an artist? Can I carry this on my own? Can I rebuild from here?”
Because the landscape of what it means to be an artist now is so different, even from when I started ten years ago. There’s so much more that’s asked of you, not just creatively, but in terms of how you show up, how you connect, how you share your life. And as someone who’s naturally quite introverted and processes things through songs, that felt overwhelming at times.
So this record really became a way of working through that. It wasn’t about proving whether the decision was right or wrong in an industry sense, it was about reconnecting with myself, with why I make music in the first place.
And I think by the time I got to the end of it, the feeling that stayed with me wasn’t relief in a business sense, it was more of a quiet kind of liberation. Like, “Okay… I made this. I followed something all the way through on my own. I found my voice again.”
So if anything, that answered the question for me in a different way. It wasn’t about whether the decision was right, it was about what I needed to go through to get back to myself, and this process gave me that.
You’ve always been known as a storyteller in your songwriting, even from those very early releases, but listening to this record, it feels like there’s a deeper level of personal reflection running through the songs. When you compare where you are now to where you were ten years ago, do these songs feel more personal or more directly tied to your own experiences, or is it more about how you’re choosing to tell those stories now?
I think they definitely feel more personal now, but I also think it’s less about a sudden switch and more about an evolution over time. When I first started writing, I was honestly quite afraid to tap into my own experiences. It felt a lot safer to observe the world around me and tell other people’s stories, or to kind of stand just outside of things and write from that perspective.
I think that came from not fully knowing how to sit with my own emotions yet, or maybe not feeling ready to share them. So a lot of those early songs were written from that observer space, which is still a part of me: I think I’ll always have that instinct as a writer.
But over the years, especially through everything that’s happened personally and creatively, I’ve been pushed more and more toward looking inward. There were moments where I almost swung the pendulum really far the other way, where everything I was writing felt very raw and directly pulled from my own life, almost like I needed to get it out in order to understand it.
And now, I feel like I’m finding a bit of a balance between those two places. There’s still a lot of me in these songs, probably more than there was ten years ago, but I’m also allowing that to sit alongside my natural instinct to observe and tell stories more broadly.
So I think the difference now is that I’m less afraid of my own voice. I’m more willing to let my own experiences live inside the songs, rather than hiding behind something else. And at the same time, I’m still really drawn to that idea of storytelling as something bigger than just me. It feels like I’m learning how to hold both of those things at once, and that’s probably the biggest shift in my writing over the last decade.
Finally, if a young songwriter came to you and said they were afraid to trust their own voice, what would you tell them?
I think the first thing I would say is that it’s completely okay to feel that way. That fear doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong, if anything, it probably means you’re getting close to something real. I think every songwriter, no matter where they are in their journey, has moments of doubting their voice or wondering if what they have to say is enough.
And I think the important part is not waiting for that fear to disappear before you start trusting yourself, because it probably never fully goes away. It’s more about learning to move forward alongside it. To write anyway. To say the thing anyway. To follow that instinct even when you’re questioning it.
For me, a big part of that has been realising that your voice doesn’t come from trying to be something, it comes from paying attention to what’s already there. The way you see the world, the things that move you, the way you tell a story, that’s already unique to you, whether you trust it yet or not.
So I would encourage them to stay curious, to keep writing, and to not be afraid of the messy parts of it. Some songs won’t feel right, some ideas won’t land, but that’s all part of figuring out what does feel true. And every time you follow that instinct, even in a small way, you’re strengthening that connection to your own voice. And I think the other thing is to remember that vulnerability is where the real connection happens. The things you might feel most unsure about sharing are often the things that will resonate the most with someone else. So it’s less about getting it perfect and more about being honest.
So yeah, I’d say it’s okay to be afraid. Just don’t let that be the thing that stops you. Do it anyway, and trust that your voice will get stronger the more you use it.
Check out Tenille's fabulous new album ‘The Acrobat' – out now in all the usual places. She will be touring the UK in September – get your tickets to see her live right here
