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KT Tunstall & Adrienne Young

Air Dates: Mar 10-Mar 16

Scotland-born rising star and "folk-rock goddess" KT Tunstall pays a visit to eTown. KT rocks the house in this repeat broadcast, with her provocative sonic mesh of heartfelt pop, rootsy electric blues, and left-field alt-folk. And talented young Nashville-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Adrienne Young hits the stage with her band, receiving some great musical support from Nick & Helen Forster and the eTones. They deliver an amazing set of warm and inviting Americana music. Plus, there's the E-Chievement Award story of a community-conscious college professor from New York State, all right here in eTown.

KT Tunstall
"The last three years have changed me as an artist," says KT Tunstall. "My bar has been raised. I've realized what's possible through making an album, touring behind it with a band, seeing how that album can turn into something else on stage, and how we can actually make it better."

It's hard to imagine how the Scottish-born singer-songwriter, known to her family as Kate, could do any better. Within six months of its February 2006 re-release, 'Eye to the Telescope', Tunstall's gritty, soulful debut, was certified gold in the U.S., and her music — a provocative sonic mesh of heartfelt pop, rootsy electric blues, and left-field alt-folk — became omnipresent all over radio, television, movies, and the Internet. Thanks to the multi-media exposure of its three singles (the Grammy-Award nominated "Black Horse the Cherry Tree," "Suddenly I See," and "Other Side of the World") 'Eye' is now certified platinum in the U.S. and quintuple platinum in the U.K., with worldwide sales exceeding 3.5 million copies.

With that kind of success, what does this 31-year-old, who has been hailed as "a folk-rock goddess" by Rolling Stone, do next? "You can't allow success to become an albatross," she says. "It's easy to be too frightened to move on, but you can't just go out and slavishly recreate what people liked." Tunstall's new album, 'Drastic Fantastic' is due from Virgin Records on September 18th, 2007.

KT will appear at Al Gore's Live Earth concert 7/7/07 at Giant's Stadium and works with the organization Global Cool (www.global-cool.com), an environmental agency that's out to "stir anyone who cares about the planet to do their bit to save the planet they care about."

Adrienne Young
Adrienne Young lives in Nashville, but everything about her suggests some other time and place: the teapot in which she brews her organic tea, the sunlight that spills through her windows over stacks of books and rustic jumbles of tapestries and instruments, her quiet passion and intelligence, and above all the sound of her music.

You could not conceive of a less likely strategy for winning pop media attention — still, that's exactly what Young achieved, from a Grammy nomination (most unusual for a debut indie release) to national radio exposure (via NPR) to numerous "best of" lists, including a "Best Country Single of the Year" citation from the Nashville Scene, third place in the Amazon.com list of "best folk recordings of the year," and benediction from the Los Angeles Times as "the Americana find of the year."

A seventh-generation Floridian, raised on the land farmed by her family generations earlier, Young graduated magna cum laude from Belmont University with a Music Business/Spanish degree. Endless and unfulfilling clerical jobs along Music Row motivated this triple-threat singer, writer and multi-instrumentalist to start her own record label, Addiebelle Music. She used her public exposure from the start to laud positive organizations and issues, becoming a champion for sustainable agriculture. In 2004, she became the spokesperson for the Food Routes Network (www.foodroutes.org), which currently has 44 chapters across the United States, actively nurturing Buy Fresh, Buy Local campaigns whose primary aims are to build and strengthen local food systems.

Young plans to donate a portion of each CD sold to the American Community Garden Association (www.communitygarden.org), maintaining her commitment to organic agriculture, direct farmer-to-consumer distribution, and self-reliance. This "seed-fund" will eventually distribute non-GM seeds to community gardens across the USA and Canada, focusing especially on urban and inner-city agriculture.

The themes of Young's new release, 'Room To Grow' are relevant to our time: human potential, self-acceptance, and celebration of all that the world has to offer, but the greatest paradox of this album is that in addressing these ideas Young enlightens herself as well.

e-chievement award: Bob Bonfiglio, Geneseo Bus Program
Bob is the Vice President of Student & Campus Life at SUNY Geneseo, located in a small town in western-central NY. He spearheaded a successful effort to implement the first ever public bus service there, which serves students and the community alike. The bus service, free for students, has cut down car trips to the campus and enables students to safely travel to other nearby communities. Their ridership (43,000 in 2002-3) topped 100,000 this year. And, Bob's effort is being modeled by other campuses.

Website:http://www.geneseo.edu/CMS/display.php?dpt=transport
Email: bonfig@geneseo.edu
Address: SUNY Geneseo, 1 College Circle, Erwin 221A, Geneseo, NY 14454
Phone: 585-245-5618 work