Born and raised in Woodstock, NY and now based in Nashville, Stella Prince is a singular new talent on the country/Americana/roots music scene. Authentic and from-the-heart, her evocative and relatable self-penned songs delve deep into the listener’s spirit and appeal to a diverse, multi-generational audience.
After heading over to the UK for the first time in 2022, the teenager who now calls Nashville, Tennessee home is set for a return visit to these shores for ten dates later this month and has recently shared her new single “Two-Faced” (available HERE) which was recorded at legendary Sound Stage Studios on Music Row.
Hey Stella, thank you for taking the time to hang out this afternoon and you are coming back to see us over here soon aren’t you? “Yes and I am so incredibly excited. I leave in about ten days and I’m going to be in the UK for almost a month.”
Is it even weirder to hear it as you are coming BACK over here? It’s not going to be your first trip because you came over last year, so something made you want to come back and see us again. “It’s funny because I was there last summer when I was seventeen and it was my first time ever going to the UK, I went to Wales and England where I loved it so much. I only played these tiny little rooms and pubs but the audiences were so kind, so warm to me and it just made me fall in love with everything. This is going to be like my first major tour, last time it was just me piecing things together but now it is actual sit down, ticketed listening rooms so I’m really excited.”
We’ve talked about you coming back over and you are playing plenty of cool spots around London in particular, including The Bedford which is one of my favourite places to see live music but coming on to talk about you yourself, you only started putting music out around two years and like you said earlier, you are still in your teens but at the start of this year, you made a big move. You traded upstate New York for the bright shiny lights of music city in Tennessee. “Yep, it was a huge move. I mean, Woodstock is a huge folk Mecca and growing up there was very inspiring, I saw a lot of incredible musicians play live BUT, Nashville is incredibly special. It is really somewhere that I had wanted to move for many years, I had started going back and forth between New York and Nashville from when I was very young so, I kind of always knew that I was going to end up here eventually.”
Even when approaching making music from more of a folk or Americana perspective, was Nashville always the goal and the thought of that is where I need to be? You know, you started playing music very young with learning piano and guitar before you reached your teens, then with a more folk lane musically, were you focusing initially on being the story writer more than telling the story yourself? “Um, that’s interesting. It’s funny that a lot of songwriters really want other people to record the songs that they have written but I’ve never really had that aspiration. Whenever I wrote songs, it was always for me specifically and always very personal where I always just saw my voice singing my songs.”
Talking about your songs, you’ve just put out “Two-Faced” which I gather was the first time that you went into the studio with a band, is that right? “Yes it’s true and it was also the first time that I had ever recorded in Nashville so, it was a really big first day. I was very nervous but there was no room for messing up because it was Steve Fishell who played on the track and invited me to record. He had worked with Emmylou Harris for like fifty years and was an original member of her band so, I was very nervous but really excited too and it went really well.”
How different did the process feel from when you are used to recording on your own to all of a sudden being in a big studio with all of these other people in there too and all of these other moving parts to think about? “It was definitely way more challenging in the beginning with just trying to figure out what everyone else was doing and making sure that you all sound good together but it was so much more rewarding. It just took my music to a whole other level, I mean there is only so much that you can do on your own and you have to have other people come in at some point, which was amazing.” How have you found the move in general, going from making music at home in New York to being somewhere where everyone is so focused on music? “There are like seventy-five thousand musicians in Nashville, in one city which is both incredible and also very intimidating because there are so many of us and there is only so much opportunity. It’s really all about finding the few people that really, really get you and worming your way in, figuring out where to go and that has been the hardest thing for me because I’m not like one genre at all. People love to label you as a specific genre anywhere you go so, a lot of people were like you should be country, which is not really who I am, that’s not me and folk is also a little bit of me but it’s not completely pure folk so, it’s been really hard to figure out just where I’m supposed to go.”
I think that is the thing about using the “Americana” umbrella where there are elements from a lot of rootsy, storytelling genres but there is a wider scope. I just want to talk about the nights that you have started putting on in town at The Underdog and I think it’s a really cool think to do. I know Todd Cassetty who puts on Song Suffragettes and that is a great platform for female artists in Nashville but I love the way that you are looking to create a space in town to bring female voices in folk and Americana specifically together. “Thank you and thank you for saying that. It’s funny how it pretty much fell into my lap very randomly where I kind of just organised one night. It was going to be one night only of me inviting some of my favourite singer-songwriters in Nashville and there were a few guys, so it was multi gender. At the end, someone came up to me and said you need to do this all female and make this a constant thing because it is so important to have that community for us, it was amazing to have this tonight, you need to make this happen more often. I was like, oh, that’s interesting and I thought it has to be folk and Americana, because there’s just not enough opportunity for those genres in Nashville. It kind of just came about very quickly and I think it is Nashville’s only all-female folk showcase so, it’s been really cool to see it grow.” I can’t wait to see you in person when you play in Balham later in the month but to finish up, you’re going to be over here for a little while and you’ve been here before so you have probably got a bit of an idea already so is there anything that you’re looking forward to over here or that we do better than back home? “It does revolve around food! I am gluten free in the US, I cannot eat gluten at all here but I go to the UK and I can pretty much eat anything I want, even if it has gluten in it. I’ve been writing down a list of everything that I want to eat in London with gluten in like garlic naan and croissants, I have this massive list so that is what I am looking forward to so much!”
The new single “Two-Faced” from Stella Prince is out now and available HERE. Stella will be playing shows in October and November across the UK with full dates shown below, which you can find more details on from her WEBSITE or following along with her socially on INSTAGRAMYOUTUBE or FACEBOOK.
UK Tour Dates Saturday 21st October The Drawing Room Chesham Sunday 22nd October Spice of Life, Soho London Monday 23rd October Temperance Leamington Spa Tuesday 24th October The Gladstone Arms, Southwark London Wednesday 25th October The Bedford, Balham London Thursday 26th October Betsy Trotwood, Clerkenwell London Sunday 29th October The Golden Lion Bristol Monday 30th October The Bristol Fringe Bristol Thursday 2nd November The Greystones Sheffield Friday 3rd November Forty-Five Vinyl Café York Saturday 4th November Town Hall Kirton in Lindsay* Monday 6th November Thirty Cafe & EateryFiley (* Support for Lauren Housley)