UK country music duo Tennessee Twin have been making music together since the late 90’s. Influenced by the early women in country music and the tv show Nashville, Geoff and Victoria who make up Tennessee Twin have been making their mark in the UK country music scene since.

Tennessee Twin have played at some of the best country music festivals the UK has to offer such as C2C (Country To Country) Festival at London’s O2 Arena (which of course they were at during our conversation), The British Country Music Festival at Blackpool’s Winter Gardens, Cambridge Folk Festival, Buckle & Boots Festival, The West Country Music Festival, Country on the Coast, multiple Foodies Festivals, Nashville Sounds In The Round, Nashville Calling and appearances overseas (including Nashville, Denver, and Amsterdam).

We caught up with Geoff and Victoria to talk about their time at C2C Festival, their music, winning a songwriting competition and more!

Enjoy!

How are you? Did you go into the main arena last night? If so who was the best for you?

Victoria- Carly Pearce was phenomenal and for me, she’s my headliner.

Yes I think she is for me too! I love a lot of the mainstream music don’t get me wrong but Carly brings a more traditional modern sound. She isn’t too charty/commercial charty which I love! I respect a lot of the mainstream country acts but their music at times can be too loud or pop like. I seem to be in the minority though as those songs chart very well!

Geoff – There was a fascinating interview I saw by a record industry guy, it was almost like a TED talk type of thing. He was from the record industry and he had done a 30 year survey of every single top ten single through the years and what the key ingredients were. He’d figured out was that if you wanted a top ten single, the chorus has to be within 30 seconds of starting and within the first, I think 20 seconds you had to say “You”. Drums to kick in the first 10 seconds. It was 80 odd per cent of the tracks that hit the top ten that had that same thing in common. I think sometimes there are people behind doors that say “it doesn’t hit the formula” so the song doesn’t get serves properly and gets shuffled into the production stuff.

Oh that’s interesting, I will have to check out if that is true now haha!

So, How did you form?

Victoria- well we met back in the 90’s. Ooh I sound like Lauren Alaina haha! We met back in the 90’s. I had embarrassingly written a song for Eurovision which got nowhere but I needed some session musicians to record it and Geoff came up as guitar and he offered to sing so that was the first time we’d sung together in harmony. We just stayed friends from that moment on and worked together throughout the years but about ten years ago, I really wanted to put a country band together and then I decided to go a bit off-piste and do the songs from the Nashville tv show! I needed someone who could be Deacon, Gunnar and Will all rolled into one and I thought “I know!” So I called Geoff and he sort of went “Country? Really?” And then very quickly said yes obviously and as an off shoot of that we decided to go off just the two of us and do a Scarlett and Gunnar sort of acoustic duo and hence Tennessee Twin kind of formed out of that really.

Geoff – What Victoria didn’t know is that my dad brought me up ok country music.

Victoria- because you kept it quiet haha

Geoff – Yeah, the first women of country. Particularly Tammy and Dolly and all those people. Then through the 90’s I have always been a musician, always been into music like the Dixie Chicks when they first appeared. I’m a massive Nanci Griffith fan and I did get to meet her once backstage at another festival. I was pretty star struck and couldn’t string a sentence together but she was amazing and those storytelling songs like Love at the Five and Dime that style of songwriting, as soon as we started talking about the idea I was like “hang on a minute, this has been in my life all this time”.

Now I’m intrigued about this Eurovision song…

Victoria- hahahaha. It was very cheesy. I am a massive Eurovision fan and still dream of one day but it served its purpose, it brought us together. We have it on cassette tape.

Geoff – and about five years ago we found it!

Victoria- and we put it back where it belonged haha. You know one day for a laugh we might resurrect it. Do a country version.

Well Eurovision is no longer embarrassing. Most of the acts tend to be stand alone great songs that could win!

What have you done, what are you doing this weekend at C2C Festival?

Victoria – we just went to the Bluebird sessions which was wonderful. Rita Wilson, Fancy Hagood and Jake Worthington. he was amazing!

Geoff – we were fortunate enough to go to the Bluebird Café in Nashville a couple of times and always had a mesmerising evening and just sitting there I probably came up with two dozen song ideas just listening to them but will probably remember one or two. It’s that magical moment of going in, not knowing any of the people that well and their music. We have seen Fancy over the last couple of days and just came away saying “that is someone on my Spotify next week”.

I wanted to ask about The British Airways competition that you won! What was the experience, did you travel first class?

Geoff – Sadly we didn’t travel first class. Nonetheless it was one of those moments, we had both written music in formats throughout our life. When we first got together to do the country duo, the country band , the Nashville stuff, we loved the songwriting aspect so much that we said to each other “oh we must write some of this stuff”.

Victoria- yeah because at that point we had never actually written together.

Geoff – and then life gets in the way right? So one day we both had seen the advert come up for this competition and in one of our rehearsal it was Victoria that said “let’s give it a go”. Unlike usual songwriting, it was actually quite a strong specification they wanted. It had to be under 3 minutes, it had to mention London and Nashville and it had to be about travels.

It had to have the chorus in 30 seconds..

Geoff – pretty much yeah haha! So that’s what we did. In a couple of evenings we wrote it and recorded an acoustic version and sent it in the day before closing date. We thought it would be the last we would hear of that but at least we’d written a song. We heard a few months later, we got an email randomly. I was actually in the passenger seat in a car to go and see another gig with a friend of mine and this email from Nashville Music City comes through saying “Congratulations, you have won the competition, we are going to fly you over to Nashville for CMA Fest” We did some recording out there and just had an amazing week.

Victoria – we were kind of guests of the city so they gave us the best table in The Bluebird, excellent seats at the Opry, it was amazing!

What was the song?

Victoria – It’s called Wings of Red, White and Blue. Now it’s one of those songs that we can’t ever play because it’s like the first pancake you ever make, it doesn’t come out that right. It’s the first song that we had written together and it’s ok but we feel like we have changed quite a lot since.

Geoff – I think we found our sound a bit later on we are very proud of the song but we don’t play it!

Tell us about the song Apple Tree…

Victoria- that stemmed out of lockdown didn’t it? The house we were living in then, unfortunately we have moved since then but we had a beautiful big garden that backed onto fields and we had an apple tree in the corner. In the evenings during that summer in lockdown, we would just go and sit under the apple tree with a glass of wine and just chill together. It was really special moments just sitting there. It made us think about how it’s these tiny moments that actually really are the big things that you will look back at and remember fondly when you’re older.

Geoff – Some songs take a long long time to put together and some kind of fall out of you. I forget who said it but someone said “Some songs come from you and some songs come through you”. That kind of felt that way, it just kind of fell out that song. I remember writing the lyrics of the chorus in about five minutes and then the rest of it not much longer! You felt the same way writing the melody? (To Victoria)

Victoria – Yes, I could hear the melody straight away in my head. That hardly ever happens haha!

Geoff – It’s a song that has a little folk influence too which is not unusual for us.

What are you working on at the moment?

Victoria- Just finishing a song that is going to be our next single. We were supposed to finish that for this weekend but we hadn’t quite finished it.

Geoff – preparing for this (C2C Festival) got in the way haha

Victoria – we are working on a full album that we hope to have out but the Autumn.

Geoff and Victoria were wonderful company and it was so lovely talking with them! We look forward to the album when it is finished and released. Please do check Tennessee Twin out on their website here for tour and music news.