Tenille Townes: Paying It Forward

Canadian country music star, Tenille Townes’ musical journey was ignited when singing along to Shania Twain in the back of her parents’ car, leading her down a road of musical self discovery and paying it forward.

Spend a few minutes with Tenille Townes and it’s immediately clear that she doesn’t see, or hear, the world like everyone else. Maybe it comes through in how she learned to read by pouring over lyric sheets and liner notes, or how she discovered she loved to sing whilst belting out U2 and Shania Twain in the back of her parents’ car.

Selfless to the core, a humble Townes has helped raise over a million dollars for a charitable initiative she created – and all while still a teenager. Speaking to Headliner from her home in Nashville during lockdown, the usually touring singer admits that the current situation doesn’t quite feel real:

“It’s been such a crazy time, and I’ve been walking every day,” she says of her lockdown habits. “That's a big part of keeping my sanity. That always puts me in a good headspace, although with wanting to be outside and be moving – it’s such a weird contradiction to be still right now. So much of my life in the last two years has been spent on the road getting to do the thing I love: playing for people. So it's definitely a drastic change to be standing still, but I'm doing my best to be thankful for the rest, and the ability to sleep more and recharge, listen to podcasts, records, plus I'm journaling, watching some fun TV shows and I’m reading more.

“I’m definitely grateful for all those things. It's so easy to just be heavy hearted thinking about the world right now and all those people who are on the front line, and everybody who can't work right now…” she trails off. “I’m doing as much as I can to try to send out as much love and positive vibes as I can, because it's easy to slip into that dangerous place in our minds, I think.”

As with many creatives, Townes is encouraged by the sense of hope and unity that has developed during the pandemic, which has seen people extend a helping hand at a time, ironically, when human contact is forbidden:

“Exactly,” she says. “The thing that brings me the most comfort right now is that we’re literally all going through this together. We can bond together and hopefully engage more; there are different ways to call people that you haven't talked to in a long time. We’re all working this out together, so that part's pretty amazing.”

At just 15, Townes organised a fundraiser called Big Hearts For Big Kids, which benefited a youth shelter in her hometown. Since then it has become an annual event, which has raised over $1.5 million dollars. Townes was inspired to start the initiative by a pamphlet her mother brought home one day.

“I am really thankful to have grown up in an incredible community who very much has this tendency to come together and really support the people in our town through a lot of different ways,” she says modestly.

“They made me believe that really, anything's possible. We started this idea for this fundraiser to really show up for the kids in our community who were struggling with homelessness, addiction or family issues – or whatever the reasons might be. It’s been life-changing watching people raise that amount of money and in the last 10 years seeing the way people have wrapped their arms around this youth shelter...it has completely changed my life and shown me the possibilities that music has in bringing people together and what really can happen. It's quite incredible to think of the power we all have when we do that.”

After she finished school, Townes continued this ethos by launching a tour called Play It Forward, where she spent 32 weeks on the road visiting 106 schools and playing music for over 35,000 students – in an effort to encourage leadership and inspire young people.

“That was a lot of fun,” she reflects. “That was a project I put together. Honestly, to convince my parents I was really serious about this whole new thing and to have a plan…” she laughs.

“It just completely blew me away hearing stories of kids in schools every day who were doing really great things to make our schools a better place. We got to hear those stories and recognize the students, and did a draw for a winner to get $10,000 to use in their school to continue that, so that’s the pay it forward spirit. It was amazing to get to meet all these incredible kids and to spend every day waking up on the road doing the thing that I love to do.”

From a young age, Townes had an uncanny ability to get into the mindset of others as a way to find inspiration to write music, penning a song she wrote from the perspective of a daughter whose father is posted in the war in Afghanistan – a topic she learned about in school.

“To me, writing is very much – like any form of creativity – like a spiritual experience where I feel like I’m a vessel for what's coming through me,” she explains.

“Songwriting sometimes means putting yourself in other people’s shoes. I think that as an idea flows through you it is carried with the pieces of your personal identity in the way that you see a situation, so in that sense, my songs are very personal, but a lot of times my favourite place to write from is an observing perspective. I really enjoy telling stories. I think what I love about songs is that you hear a piece of your own story in a song and it makes you feel like you're not the only person who's felt that way before. That's probably my favourite part about music.”