TENILLE ARTS

W/ Mallory Johnson, Molly Brown, and Callie McCullough

Monday September 20, 2021

@ The Listening Room Café in Nashville, TN

(Review by: Jeffrey Kurtis)

TCM Single Review: "Back Then, Right Now" 

Music Video: "Somebody Like That" 

www.tenillearts.com  

The Listening Room Café is the premier venue in Nashville for being introduced to great songwriters, discovering incredible new songs, and really getting to hear them while allowing their impact to move you emotionally as the café asks that its patrons keep any talking to a whisper out of respect for the songwriters and their craft. 

While our focus on this night was Tenille Arts, that takes absolutely nothing away from what Mallory Johnson, Molly Brown, and Callie McCullough also brought to the stage during this night’s songwriter round 

Mallory Johnson, who led the round, offered powerful songs such as “Wise Woman,” a shot of encouragement on “Surprise Party,” and plenty of memorable, humorously tilted moments on “Married” and “Just Like You.”

Molly Brown, a rock kissed Americana bent songwriter who is familiar to any fan of the incredible Tim Montana as she plays in his band, balanced her portion of the round by showcasing her more country tilted side on “White Horses” and “How Do You Live With Yourself,” while counterplaying it against her attitude infused rock side on songs such as “Pink Lemonade.”

Callie McCullough, a songwriter raised on the most traditional of traditional country and bluegrass, played mostly new songs that she has been working on that included “What If I Don’t” and “3 Little Words,” while closing with the familiar “Three Quarter Time,” a song from her acclaimed After Midnight EP.

“This is my brand-new single that’s just charted at country radio,” began Tenille Arts. “I think we’ve all been inspired during this pandemic to write songs that reflect more than usual, and I thought a lot about back home and how much simpler life was back then,” she finished as she played the ultra-catchy “Back Then, Right Now” to kick off her portion of the round.

“This next song I’m gonna play is a breakup song,” Arts introduced. “It’s about how when you’re going through a breakup you search for the people who can take that heartbreak away, but how the person who broke your heart is the only one who can so you go back to them many, many times. This song is a duet that I did with the incredible Matt Stell for my new album Girl To Girl (out October 22, 2021),” she said as she masterfully delivered both her and Stell’s parts of “Over You Is You.”

“Since all of us are girlfriends up here, I wanted to play a song that was inspired by them tonight. I first started coming to Nashville when I was 16 years old, and I moved here 6 years ago” she began. “I moved into my first one-bedroom apartment, which I just recently moved out of, and my mom was here with me for about 2 weeks and then she went home. I didn’t know anyone my age here. I had no friends in town yet. But over time that all changed. There were a lot of ups and downs and dreams that came true while I was living in that one-bedroom apartment and that’s what this song is about. It’s kind of my letter to the next dreamer who is going to move into that place,” she told as she played the incredible “One Bedroom Apartment.”

“I had dated someone for a very long time from my hometown, and I actually wrote this song before we broke up, but I knew it was coming. That’s such a weird feeling when you just want to fast-forward past those emotions to like a year down the road,” she shared transparently. “I got to perform this song on a television show called The Bachelor, and that was so weird for me because I sung a break-up song during a one-on-one date,” she said as she laughed with the crowd before belting out the amazing, “I Hate This.”

“I had a #1 song this past year during the pandemic, which is crazy, but this song has literally changed my life! I wrote this one after writing a ton of breakup songs and I wanted to write something that was more hopeful,” she finished as she and the crowd had a sing-a-long to close out the night with “Somebody Like That.”

FULL SET LIST

1) Back Then, Right Now

2) Over You Is You

3) One Bedroom Apartment

4) I Hate This

5) Somebody Like That

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