Tenille Townes Artistfacts

January 20, 1994
For Townes, songwriting is a spiritual experience. "You're transported through the music," she told Songfacts. "It's a form of surrender, where you're trusting where the song is taking you... It's the closest thing to a real-life magical experience."
Her birth name is Tenille Nadkrynechny, so you can understand why she changed it. "Townes" comes from Township Road 722, the road she grew up on in the Grande Prairie area of Alberta, Canada.
Not surprisingly considering she's a country singer from Canada, Townes is a huge fan of Shania Twain. When Tenille was 9 years old she got to not only see Shania in concert but join her on stage, thanks to her sign that read, "Shania, Can I Please Sing With You"? (she sang part of "What A Way To Wanna Be!") In 2023, Townes was an opening act on Twain's Queen Of Me Tour.
She writes her own songs, often with co-writers on the Nashville scene. She started writing songs soon after her grandparents gave Tenille her first guitar when she was 14.
Her breakthrough song was "Somebody's Daughter" in 2018, which went to #1 on the Canadian Country chart. She wrote the song after spotting a homeless woman off a highway exit.
She moved to Nashville in 2013 when she was 19. She made the 45-hour trek from Alberta in her Toyota Tacoma.
In 2023 she released a duet with Bryan Adams called "The Thing That Wrecks You." She ran into him while recording music for a Hallmark movie at Adams' studio in Vancouver, where she proffered the idea of doing a duet. To her surprise, Adams agreed.
She's won a trove of awards in her native Canada, including five Canadian Country Music Association awards on one night in 2022, including Entertainer Of The Year and Album Of The Year (Masquerades).
She's a questioning Christian, sometimes wondering about God's motives in her songs. An example is "Jersey On The Wall (I'm Just Asking)," which tells the story of a high school athlete who is killed in a car crash.

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