Biography
Born with a striking vocal timbre and an otherworldly way with melody that evoked a freak-folk take on Mazzy Star or This Mortal Coil, singer-songwriter Cortney Tidwell entered a household steeped in music, yet that lineage felt as much a burden as a gift during her formative years. Nashville, TN, was the city of her birth; there her grandfather had enjoyed success as a recording artist and had appeared on the Grand Ole Opry, her father had built a long career as an A&R executive, her mother had placed several singles on the country charts during the 1970s, and the family’s social circle embraced figures such as Townes Van Zandt and Jack Clement. In the mid-’70s, however, her mother received a diagnosis of manic depression; the marriage dissolved while the illness deepened, and the elder Tidwell was later found deceased in solitude in 1999 at the age of forty-nine. Throughout childhood Cortney sought refuge at the piano amid the surrounding turmoil, yet she gradually linked music itself with that period’s anguish and therefore abandoned the instrument for an extended stretch. The period surrounding her mother’s death, which overlapped with the suicide of a close friend, prompted her to resume songwriting as a means of processing emotion. After performing with a cover band and starting a punk group alongside a friend, she began capturing her own compositions in a rudimentary home studio, handling every instrument personally. She eventually presented this material live; while some listeners remained unmoved, she soon earned the regard of several of Nashville’s most respected players, among them musicians affiliated with Lambchop and Hands Off Cuba. In spring 2005 she issued her debut release, an untitled six-song EP on the emerging Nashville imprint Sissy Bragg Records. While supporting Lou Barlow on tour, her work reached the British label Even Records, which signed her and issued a second EP at the start of 2006. Several months afterward came her first full-length album, Don’t Let the Stars Keep Us Tangled Up, produced jointly by Tidwell and her husband Todd Tidwell and featuring contributions from Kurt Wagner and William Tyler of Lambchop.
Albums
Singles
