Twinnie’s poster for her November 28 homecoming gig at The Crescent, York
TWINNIE, the Nashville country pop star with York roots, returns to her home city on her five-date Crazy Ex tour to play The Crescent on November 28.
She will be promoting her second album, Something We Used To Say, released last Friday with no fewer than 22 tracks, in keeping with 2024’s most expansive records, Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter and Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department.
Documenting the devastation of the end of her long-term relationship and her attempt to move on with the songs that featured on her Blue Hour project, the album arrives with Twinnie on the crest of a wave. She has made history as the first British artist to perform the American national anthem at Geodes Park, home of MLS team Nashville SC – “proper football, and I won’t call it ‘soccer’,” she says – in the the wake of making her Grand Ole Opry debut last November.
“It was an amazing experience, making history with my background as the first Romany Gypsy singer to sing there,” she says.
Twinnie: Making her mark in Nashville
Earlier this month, on November 2, she had the honour of performing a special Songwriter Session at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.
On top of all that, Twinnie is appearing on prime-time television screens as new character Jade in Emmerdale on her long-awaited return to soap opera after being nominated for Best Newcomer at the Inside Soap Awards for her role as Porsche McQueen in Hollyoaks (a part she played from November 2014 to December 2015).
“My life has been a bit crazy recently juggling music and acting, lots of back and forth, but loving it!” says Twinnie, who made her Emmerdale debut on October 11. “I’ve loved being back on screen, especially as the show is shot in Yorkshire. Being able to be home with family and go to work on such an iconic show has been nothing short of amazing!”
Having landed BBC Radio 2’s Album of the Week for her 2020 debut, Hollywood Gypsy, exceeded 25 million streams for her first American label EP, Welcome To The Club, and released the ambitious, two-chapter Blue Hour project, Twinnie set about making her second album. “It was recorded in Nashville, where I moved last year, and in England too,” she says.
The artwork for Twinnie’s November 8 album, Something We Used To Say
“I really put the work in. With anything I do, I try to do it 110 per cent, drawing from other artists. I’ve really honed my craft. I’ll write twice a day at different sessions, sometimes three times. In Nashville writing rooms they realise ‘she knows how to write songs’, so they guide me rather than write songs for me.
“I’m that ‘5ft 8 British girl that talks funny’ – and there aren’t many doing that! I’ve really embedded myself in Nashville, where it really reminds me of being at home, going round for a cup of tea with my grandma, whereas in London I was missing that sense of community.
“I’d been going to Nashville on and off for seven or eight years, but as soon as I moved there, I made my Grand Ole Opry debut within eight months. Jamie Johnson made that happen for me: such a class act. A complete legend.”
You can take Twinnie out of Yorkshire but you can’t take the Yorkshire out of Twinnie, after first catching the eye as Twinnie-Lee Moore on the York musical theatre scene in her teenage days. “I’m big on authenticity. I still feel like I’m the same person,” she says. “I’m really proud to be putting Yorkshire and England on the American country music map, and my big ambition is to be the first British solo artist to have an American number one country album.”
Twinnie-Lee Moore, aged 21, in the role of double murderess Velma Kelly in Chicago, The Musical on tour at the Grand Opera House, York, in April 2009. Six years earlier, she had played Dorothy in the Summer Youth Project’s The Wizard Of Oz on that same stage
It is not a case of Twinnie jumping on a country bandwagon. “Country music is pop music, it’s in the pop culture, and I was doing it before The Shires became The Shires, when I was working with Ben [Earle] from that group,” she says.
Explaining how the album took shape, Twinnie says: “After the last two Blue Hour EPS, I wanted to put out a body of work telling people what I’d been through, being dropped in 2022 by a major label [BMG] and by my boyfriend. We had a break-up: I’ve gone independent and there was nothing keeping me there any more, so I moved to Nashville.
“I’m so glad that I did with all the experiences I’ve had, with my new album celebrating my new life, grieving my old one, moving away from my family. I don’t want to be famous; I want to be infamous and to have people resonate with the sentiments of my music. Just go for it; you only have one life, so you might as well make it an adventure. That’s why I’m going to stay in Nashville.”
Twinnie plays The Crescent, York, on November 28, 7.30pm. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.
Twinnie: the northerner takes the road to the American South
YORK
country singer-songwriter Twinnie will go ahead with the April 17 launch of her
debut album, Hollywood Gypsy, even amid the Coronavirus lockdown.
After all,
it took the West End musical leading light, model, Hollyoaks soap star and film
actress ten years to land a record contract with big hitters BMG.
“I feel
very excited and it’s come around really quickly since I released my first EP
[Better When I’m Drunk] last March,” says Twinnie, 32, who first took to the York
stage as Twinnie-Lee Moore at the age of four.
“Given the
current situation with the Coronavirus pandemic, it’s a weird time, but I’m a
new artist, I’ve waited so long to make an album, and right now, more than
ever, I feel I need music, we need music.
“It would
be easy to panic, but I’ve found I’ve connected more than ever with my fans on
Instagram Live.”
Making country inroads: the artwork for Twinnie’s debut album, Hollywood Gypsy
Twinnie was
to have played a sold-out home-city gig at The Crescent on March 22 to showcase
Hollywood Gypsy, but the Coronavirus pandemic put paid to her debut headline tour,
now re-arranged for the autumn. Glasgow, London, Manchester, Birmingham and
Bristol await, before a Crescent crescendo on November 29, with tickets
remaining valid.
Twinnie did
perform, however, at the prestigious Country2Country (C2C) Festival in Berlin
on March 7 and 8, and coming next was a C2C show at the O2 Arena, London, on March
14. “That would have been a really big deal for me, being able to promote my
album and tour, so it’s a real downer, but I’m just really grateful that
there’s still light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s good that we’ve managed
to re-schedule the tour,” she says.
As chance
would have it, the C2C cancellation led to a prompt invitation to fill the void
in Twinnie’s diary with a live set on BBC Radio 2’s The Country Show with Bob
Harris on March 12. “Bob has been a really big supporter of mine,” she says.
“He was the first DJ to support me on the radio, even before I had a recording
contract. I just sent him a track and he played it!”
Bob Harris: supportive host of BBC Radio 2’s The Country Show
Twinnie
first trod the boards in York when attending the late Miss Isobel Dunn’s dance
school, started playing a keyboard at seven and then performed in the Grand
Opera House pantomime dance ensemble. She progressed from roles as Bet in
Oliver! in 2001 and Lilly in Annie in 2002 in the Grand Opera House Summer Youth
Project to playing Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz in 2003.
“I was 16 and I thought
I might have been too tall for Dorothy but the director, Simon Barry, said I
was the right choice,” she recalls.
A
month later, the former Joseph Rowntree School pupil was leaving behind her Haxby
Road home for three years of dance and musical theatre studies at Phil
Winston’s Theatre Works in Blackpool.
West End roles ensued in We Will Rock You and the short-lived Desperately Seeking Susan, and in April 2009, now 21, she returned home to the Grand Opera House as 1920s’ Chicago double murderess and aloof nightclub singer Velma Kelly in the national tour of Chicago.
Twinnie-Lee Moore in her role as double murderess Velma Kelly in Chicago, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York, in April 2009
Her face greeted the London Underground
throng on Chicago’s trademark black-and-white posters too and she had a year as
the Latino character Jazmin in Flashdance in the original London cast at the
Shaftsbury Theatre from autumn 2010.
Twinnie sang Miley Cyrus’s The Climb when competing on BBC One talent show The Voice in March 2012, failing to hit the heights alas with an early exit. After film roles in Iron Clad 2 and Strangelove in 2014, she made her soap debut as racy Porsche McQueen in Channel 4’s Hollyoaks in November that year, playing her for a year.
A further screen role followed in The
Wife, the Oscar-nominated Glenn Close film, but all the while, Twinnie was
drawn to making music. “To be honest, music was probably the first thing I
started out wanting to do, which people don’t know about. But people pay their
dues to pay their mortgage,” she says.
“Even when I was doing We Will Rock You
at 19 with Brian May, performing eight shows a week, I was playing country
songs in dive bars too at the weekend.”
Twinnie-Lee Moore in her soap-opera days as Porsche McQueen in Channel 4’s Hollyoaks
Now dividing her time between London and
Nashville, Twinnie is living out that wish to put her song-writing to the fore.
“I’ve been on stage since I was four years old, and my dad introduced me to the
music of some of the best songwriters. Like my first gig was Gilbert
O’Sullivan,” she says.
“And I always loved musicals too. I grew
up watching Hollywood movie musicals, especially Judy Garland, which is one of
the reasons I’ve called the album Hollywood Gypsy.”
Determination to succeed marked out
Twinnie from a young age. “Even at eight, I wrote down the addresses of the
Sony Music and Universal record company labels. Then one of my poems got
published at school. I always wanted to tell stories,” she says.
“I got told you have to do everything for
what you do to work. You can’t just stand there and sing. I always want people
to feel entertained when I do a show.
“Coming from the North, I’m always looking to make a real connection,” says Twinnie. “That’s why I write so honestly, talking about all my faults”. Picture: Alex Berger
“I don’t think there are many ‘triple
threat’ performers like me, so I want to tell the story, not just in the song,
but in the performance too.”
Country music might not have been an
obvious outlet for a York singer and songwriter, but Twinnie says: “For me,
country music was always big. Johnny Cash; Dolly Parton, one of the great
songwriters; Shania Twain and now Taylor Swift,” she says.”
Twinnie has been travelling to
Nashville, Tennessee, for the past six or seven years, leading to her co-writing in the capital of country with Grammy
Award-winning writers Nathan Chapman, Liz Rose and Dave Barns.
“I also wrote with Ben
Earle, before he formed The Shires with Crissie Rhodes, and two of my songs
with him, Black And White and First Flight Out, ended up on their first album,
Brave,” she says.
Crissie Rhodes and Ben Earle of The Shires. Twinnie co-wrote two songs on their debut album with Earle
Now, after winning Best
Breakthrough Act at the 2019 British Country Music Association awards and a
support slot on Kiefer Sutherland’s tour, everything comes to fruition for
Twinnie on Hollywood Gypsy.
This is a thoroughly modern country album, made with the likes of Little Mix, One Direction and Britney Spears producer Peter Hammerton, and recorded in Nashville, London and Sweden,with such song titles as Better When I’m Drunk, Type Of Girl, Whiplash, Lie To Me and I Love You Now Change.
“Every genre changes
and country music is now so diverse, but everyone appreciates a good melody,
strong lyrics, and that’s why people really respect country music,” says
Twinnie, who loves the candour of country songs.
“Coming from the North, I’m always
looking to make a real connection. That’s why I write so honestly, talking
about all my faults,” she says.
“When you feel you’re getting out of your depth, that’s when the magic happens,” says Twinnie . Picture: Maximilian Hetherington
“I have no shame in highlighting my
flaws and being vulnerable: there’s a strength in vulnerability when we can all
connect with it. Each song shows a different side of my personality: I either
want to break someone’s heart or make them dance.”
Returning to the album title, Twinnie says: “It
pretty much sums me up. As well as my love of Hollywood musicals, I’m a
traveller by nature and by heritage, so I’m quite free. Hollywood Gypsy is about me, my
life, my artistry.
“I’m representing my dad’s heritage, my mum’s heritage, and I’m very proud of that heritage. It’s who I am and why I’m free spirited.
“All of it, whether I’m acting, dancing, modelling
or singing, I’m just not afraid to push my boundaries because, when you feel
you’re getting out of your depth, that’s when the magic happens.”
Recording in Nashville, London and Sweden adds to
Twinnie being a Hollywood Gypsy, she suggests. “I feel I’m a bit of a musical
gypsy, taking from different genres, growing up listening to Tupac, Gilbert O’Sullivan,
Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Joel, Shania Twain,” she says. “Obviously Queen too: I’m
always so grateful to Brian May for when I did We Will Rock You.”
Dave Stewart: co-writing with Twinnie via the medium of FaceTime
In the Coronavirus
lockdown, Twinnie has set herself a three-week challenge that began a week ago to
listen to an album a day and then pick her favourite song from each one to
learn how to play it. “I never have time to do things like this, so I’m using
this time to grow and get inspired,” she says. “I’m also trying to learn
Spanish.”
Along with many
musicians, she is “trying to find new ways to do things at the moment”. Such
as? “I’ve written a song on FaceTime with Dave Stewart, from the Eurythmics,”
Twinnie reveals. “I’d never met him before, but he’s from Sunderland, I’m from
York, so we had that banter of being northerners together!”
Still in
the diary for July 11 is Twinnie’s appearance at Pocklington Arts Centre’s
Platform Festival at the Old Station, Pocklington (an event subject to further Coronavirus
updates), but what’s coming next for Twinnie? “I was meant to be going to
America to make an EP in Nashville, and that recording will still happen, but I
may now have to find a way of doing it remotely,” she says.
Looking further ahead, she says: “Hollywood Gypsy is the first chapter. Next year will be the next half of the story. So it’ll be like a double album.”
Twinnie’s new video for I Love You Now Change
Did you know?
IN Twinnie’s
new video for I Love You Now Change, she is seen signing divorce papers.
“I put my ex’s name on the papers when we shot
the video for a laugh, but some people actually thought it was real,” she says.
“Just to clarify, I have never been married and Boris killed off the
socialising and dating scene, so looks like I won’t be in a white dress anytime
soon.”
The husband
in the video is played by Gustav Wood. Watch it at twinnieofficial.com.
How did The Press
reviewer judge 16-year-old Twinnie-Lee Moore’s lead performance as Dorothy in
the Grand Opera House Summer Youth Project’s The Wizard Of Oz in York in August
2003?
“Twinnie-Lee displays supremely confident skills in stage movement; her Kansas accent is spot-on too, and once her voice fully warms up after Over The Rainbow, she sings with expression, albeit in the modern pop style that might better suit The Wiz.”
