Tristan Prettyman

Tristan Prettyman

CATCH THE WAVE
Surfer-cum-Singer-Songwriter Tristan Prettyman Sends a Musical Postcard
Like Jack Johnson, singer-songwriter Tristan Prettyman made waves as a professional surfer before she ever picked up a guitar. And like fellow San Diegan Jason Mraz -- with whom she's said to have more than a professional relationship -- she injects her songs with teasing wordplay and gently swaying rhythms. But as she proves on her major-label debut -- the title of which alludes to her age -- Prettyman conjures a vibe all her own: a little bit sensual, a little bit sassy, and entirely natural. She took a break from hanging ten long enough to help Barnes & Noble.com's David Sprague do the math on Twentythree.

Barnes & Noble.com: How did you end up playing music in the first place?

Tristan Prettyman: It was kind of an accident. My dad had a guitar laying around and I found it and I was very curious, so I started teaching myself. My friends knew that and they encouraged me to play at parties. They'd be like, "There's a guitar, give it to Tristan." Then they put one of my songs on the surf movie soundtrack, where I was found playing on the beach.... It kind of went backward for me. I won a battle of the bands in front of, like, 600 people before I ever played a coffee shop, and then I started playing more intimate places.

B&N.com: Did you have a role model?

TP: Definitely. I was definitely inspired by Ani DiFranco -- not so much in wanting to sound like her but in looking at the way she did things. When I heard her, I'd never heard anything like that, never heard a girl go out and be, like, "Yo, this is how I feel, I'm gonna sing about it, even if it's not mainstream." She just went for it. So as a young girl, that really hit me. She was the first person to really get through to me that it was cool to go out and speak your mind without worrying what anyone thought of you.

B&N.com: How would you compare playing in front of an audience to surfing in front of an audience?

TP: They're both beautiful forms of expression. When I was younger, I liked surfing competitively, but then I realized I liked it more when the competitive aspect wasn't there. I just wanted to be able to go and surf, and I feel the same way about music. When you're in a contest, you can't really free-surf, but when you're playing music, you can do it freely and still do your job.

B&N.com: The term "surf music" seems to have changed over the years.

TP: The music that's accompanying surf videos these days is a lot more...artistic. I think the videos themselves are a lot more artistic. I guess music that goes along with surfing is more laid-back now than it has been in the past.

B&N.com: You've toured and worked with a lot of musicians like Jack Johnson and G. Love. Have they offered any advice or encouragement?

TP: They have. Even though those people aren't Top 40 and a billion people don't know their music, they have a lot of respect. That's really more important to me than being really popular; I've never been into music that was super-popular. And maybe because they're not huge, they're more down-to-earth and more willing to share. They also have more to share because they didn't get to the point they're at because of some kind of fluke.

B&N.com: The album's first single, "Love Love Love," is a very positive song. Where did that come from?

TP: It was written around the time the Iraq thing really started coming to a head, and it was my way of saying I wanted to...not tune out the world, exactly, but live my life and keep my head up and think about things that made me happy. You can get so stuck on focusing on negative things, but if you stop and think about it, life is beautiful.

B&N.com: How did you end up working with Jesse Harris [who co-wrote Norah Jones's "Come Away with Me"]?

TP: It started off as a co-writing thing. The label wanted me to do that, which I've never done, and I said I'd only do it if they let me pick the people. I put together this wish list, and Jesse was on it because I really loved that first Norah Jones record that he worked on. So we met and went into this little booth. He said, "Have you ever written with anyone before?" and I said no and he said, "Me either." We just ended up playing guitar together for two hours. He's one of the very few people I've ever played with who just immediately played what I heard in my head without me even explaining it.

B&N.com: This album takes its title from your age -- if it had been delayed, would you have changed the title to Twentyfour?

TP: No. This is my theory. Albums are like postcards, and you make them and you send them, and by the time someone gets them, you're already somewhere else. So as permanent and perfect as they are, you're still changing, so I'd just let it be where it is.

August 2005