Tenille Townes At L'Astral

Sometimes you just get drawn to something without really knowing why.  To be perfectly honest, I don’t follow very much Country music.  My lasting impression of the genre is spinning a vinyl record at my grand-parents home and listening to The Oak Ridge Boys singing about meeting up with Elvira at The Hungry House Café.  Gidy up, indeed.  However, in recent years a whole new generation of Country music stars have hit the scene and Montreal has suddenly found itself as being Nashville North, with a large local group of Country artists and a summer festival that attracts many big names from all over North America.  One of those new generation stars is Tenille Townes, who was playing at L’Astral this past Sunday night.  Had I been following, I would have known that she had a terrific album, The Lemonade Stand, which was released last year.  I would have also know that she has already won several prestigious awards, such as the Canadian Country Music Award for Songwriter and Female Artist of the Year in 2019 and 2020, was nominated for a couple of Juno Awards in 2020 before winning a Juno this year for Country Album of the Year as well as another Canadian Country Music Award for Female Artist of the Year.  Yet, I knew none of this but was still oddly drawn to advertisements for her concert for reasons I couldn’t understand.  So, I sent off a request for a photo pass to the show, arrived early because bad weather had been planned and was then allowed to enter for the VIP Meet & Greet Session.  It was then that I had my ‘Aha’ moment.  As she was answering questions from her fans, she mentioned how one of her greatest supporters had been her grandparents, who she always called Mémère and Pépère.  That’s when the goose bumps began to rise on my arms as we called my Grandparents on my Mother’s side the exact same thing.  Though Pépère passed away when I was only 5, Mémère was always interested in what we were up to.  She sadly passed away before I really took up photography, but had the same free spirit as Tenille described her own grandmother as having, someone who enjoyed life and still went out dancing on a regular basis.  I’m not the most spiritual person out there, but there had to be some reason why I had become so obsessed with going to that show, and I’d like to think that it was some Grandmotherly persuasion being sprinkled about.  We’ve done a lot of talking, but still haven’t actually mentioned the music.  The concert was terrific.  Her songs all seem to be rooted in some kind of personal story, which gives then an authentic feeling of coming straight from the heart.  The crowd was toe tapping and swaying away through her set and even getting a little rowdy as she broke into a cover of a Joan Jett song before sending everyone home happy after an encore.  The first photograph was taken at f/3.2, 1/80sec, ISO 5000 at 33mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/3.2, 1/50sec, ISO 10000 at 24mm.  The third photograph was taken at f/3.2, 1/60sec, ISO 10000 at 24mm and the fourth photograph was taken at f/3.2, 1/50sec, ISO 10000 at 70mm.  Here are a few more photographs that I took of her performance.

f/3.2, 1/60sec, ISO 10000 at 24mm

f/3.2, 1/60sec, ISO 5000 at 24mm

f/3.2, 1/60sec, ISO 5000 at 24mm

f/3.2, 1/80sec, ISO 5000 at 24mm

f/3.2, 1/50sec, ISO 5000 at 28mm

f/2.8, 1/125sec, ISO 12800 at 185mm

f/3.2, 1/50sec, ISO 5000 at 33mm

f/3.2, 1/60sec, ISO 5000 at 24mm

If you’d like to find out more about Tenille Townes and her music, you can do so by following the link to her website.  If you’d like to see the photographs of Brittany Kennell, who played earlier in the evening, you can do so by following this link.  A big thank you to Crystal Dishmon of Shopkeeper Management for getting me a photo pass for the show.  It was an evening full of warmth, enough to make one forget the winter storm that was beginning to blow outside.  Thank for sending me Mémère.