THE RETURN OF INTUITION

by Tenille Townes

I have the kind of heart that holds on for the long haul.

For better or worse. It’s why I hate goodbyes. And dread endings. Because it’s painful when change inevitably comes around and teaches you how to let go.

So much in my life has changed in the past couple years with relationship endings and career shifts and I have found my stubborn heart at a crossroads between who I was and who I’m becoming. Between the wide-eyed optimist who moved 47 hours away from home to chase the dream, and the recovering people pleaser standing on the other side of a major record deal figuring out how to keep moving forward.

So much has changed in the world too. It’s full of noise right now. The kind of noise that makes us afraid of the future. And makes us forget about the power of our common ground. That noise has made me crave simplicity and honesty and led me back to the comfort of creating this stripped down record. There’s something intangible that ties us all together. And when I play music, it’s the closest I can get to holding that mystery of hope in my hands.

A year ago, I wasn’t sure I had what it took anymore to be an artist. I doubted whether what I had to offer as an introverted creator was worth anything in our fast scrolling, extroverted world. But something in me kept writing anyway. Something in me decided to at least make a few guitar vocals. Something in me kept thinking about you, the one listening on the other side of the recording. And chord by chord and line by line, this record stitched up the fragments of my heart until I could recognize it beating in my chest again.

Making this record helped me rediscover my own autonomy.

It helped me find some acceptance in letting go of what isn’t meant for me. I started this project thinking they were just work tapes. Something to help me start making sense of what songs to eventually take into the studio. I was just trying to sort through the noise of this industry and this world in a time when I honestly felt pretty lost. I went from having the infrastructure of an entire team around me, to sitting alone in the spare room of my house with my dog and all my insecurities, writing and recording songs I loved. Finding my voice again because it was the only one around. And I wanted that to feel like freedom but if I’m honest, for a long time it just felt like loneliness.

In the middle of that loneliness, I was forced to start peeling back the layers of my people pleasing tendencies. Almost like cleaning out a closet, the one you can’t even open anymore without everything spilling out at the slightest crack of the door. What I found underneath the stacks of coping mechanisms and survival habits was my intuition. This connection to the source of something so much bigger than the confines of my heart and brain. And that intuition told me I needed to share this collection of songs, leaving them as is. From my spare room to your ears, in all its raw and imperfect ways.

My limitations as a recording engineer are the reason the vulnerability on this project stayed intact. I used one SM7 microphone on everything. None of the vocals are tuned because I don’t know how to do that. I just sang these songs until they had the right emotion I wanted to hear, and then I let them be. It’s kind of a miracle my inner critic let me let them be, but I think maybe it was just exhausted. And so I learned what it feels like to surrender the flaws and character that all make it feel more human anyway. And I’m really proud of how this turned out.

This is my first time producing a record on my own, playing every instrument and deciding what it all needed. First time mixing it too. I think every little decision I made, all cumulatively helped strengthen my intuition again. The healing that came from that process is a major win for this record for me, no matter what happens once this collection of songs is released.

I hope this record feels like an invitation.

I know I’m not the only one who clings to hope like a silver string. And who has drifted from my sense of self and needed help finding my way back. I believe we are in a time in our history when we truly need each other. And I believe that’s what music is for.

Music lets my heart keep holding on to whatever it needs to. And then the feelings I’m afraid of can exist without pretending they don’t. Because I have felt aware lately of the passage of time, and so afraid of growing older without certain people in my life beside me. Because it’s terrifying when your life starts to look differently than you thought it would. It felt healing for me to talk about that in these songs; less isolating to say it out loud. And that has always been at the heart of my mission, to share songs that help us feel a little less alone.

In some of the darkest moments of my unraveling in the past few years, thinking about you guys and all your support, was a light on the shoreline for me. Thank you for being the community you are, and for giving me the courage to trust my intuition again and keep putting one foot in front of the other. It is my greatest hope that this album can return the favor. – Tenille Townes