Our February Fresh Find artist is rising Canadian country star Trinity Bradshaw. Hailing from Summerside, PEI, Trinity recently released her latest single “Guns Don’t Kill Good Men (Love Does)” from her forthcoming E.P, set to be released this summer and recorded at the world-famous Blackbird Studios in Nashville, TN. Learn more about this homegrown talent by reading our interview with her below!
TC: Who are some of your biggest musical influences?
TB: Let’s start with when I was a young girl because they’ve changed over the years, of course, because there are so many great artists in the Canadian country music world and the county music world in general. I grew up listening to Shania Twain, a lot of Shania Twain actually. I started singing karaoke when I was only three years old – my parents bought me a karaoke machine – I’d like to think they planned this life for me! So Shania Twain was a huge influence, she just brought a lot of fun into her music which is what I try to incorporate in mine. Tanya Tucker, Gretchen Wilson and I also listened to a lot of AC/DC and Fleetwood Mac and a lot of the great rock bands. These days I listen to a lot of Miranda Lambert, you can probably hear a little bit of her influence through my music, I really dig her sound and she’s a country artist that’s a little rough around the edges and I really dig that. Zac Brown Band and Mumford and Sons right now is my favourite!
TC: Can you tell us a bit about your new single?
TB: Heck yeah! I’ll tell you a little bit of the story behind it. My manager and I were on our way to Toronto on an air plane and we were super bored and he was like ‘well let’s start writing a song’. Normally, before I ever got introduced to co-writes, I would sit down and write songs by myself and my influences were very different – I would literally just write about life and what’s happened to me and what I’ve experienced, but we decided to make this kind of a fun song and put a fun little story together. So we wrote half of the song in the air plane and then we brought it to my co-producer Russ Broom and we finished the song that day that and we were just really happy with it. It’s my first fun song that I’ve written that I’m really happy with.
TC: Do you find that it gets easier or harder to write songs the more you write?
TB: I used to think it was way easier to write songs when I was little, when I first started writing songs because I could just put words together on paper, come up with a great melody and I thought it was a great song. I thought that people would relate to it because I wrote it about experiences in my life and I hoped other people would connect with it, but obviously after a couple trips to Nashville and writing with the bigwigs I soon found out that songwriting has a certain formula and certain words to be used so that people can actually easily connect to the song. So it’s gotten a little bit harder but it’s brought up the fun level a lot – it’s more fun now that I can incorporate ideas rather than experiences.
TC: Are there any words that you love or hate to use in your songs?
TB: Not really, I’m still tapping into that mindset of thinking about what I’m wiritng – I still tend to ramble a lot when I’m songwriting. So I don’t have any go to words or anything like that, basically if it sounds good and tells a story then it works. I’ve actually had lots of people give me input and tell me what words to use though like using the word “you” is very important, I learned that in one of my recent trips to Nashville so ever since I learned that I tend to use the word ‘you’ a lot so that listeners can connect. That’s my favourite word.
TC: What was it like recording your upcoming album at the legendary Blackbird Studios?
TB: Amazing to put it simply. It was a ridiculous experience. Blackbird Studios is humongous, it’s very deceiving. It looks like a tiny little house when you go in so I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. All the best artists have performed there and I was there and in the recording room that Taylor Swift had recorded her vocals in and Tim McGraw stood there and sang his songs, it was amazing.
TC: What else do you have coming up this summer for fans to look forward to?
TB: Spring and summer festivals all over Canada – we’re starting to book them right now. We’re getting some calls and offers come in and I’m excited to hit the road and share my new music with everybody. There’s a ton of songs that I haven’t even performed live that we’re going to incorporate into our set list so I’m pretty excited.
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