She Had Us At 'Hello'
Tristan Prettyman's Album Has Depth, but It Lacks Her Self-Proclaimed Attitude

By Moira E. McLaughlin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 15, 2008

Listen to Tristan Prettyman's appealing music. Read her MySpace page where she writes about such favorite things as bikinis, beach towels and seat heaters, acai fruit, avocados and artichokes. Then watch her "Madly" music video showcasing her über cute boyfriend, Jesse. Do all this and you might find yourself a little envious of the 26-year-old singer-songwriter who will perform with G. Love at Wolf Trap tonight.

"I'm on a bus for the first time, and I'm ecstatic. It's like the most exciting time of my whole life," Prettyman said from Iowa, where the seven-week tour opened.

Her story is pretty remarkable, if only for the relative ease with which Prettyman seems to have achieved a name for herself. Her new album, "Hello . . . X," was released in April and sold about 18,000 copies the first week. (Prettyman recorded the album in London, and the X is taken from the British youth who sign their e-mails and text messages with an X, meaning something along the lines of "cheers," she said.)

The narrative of Prettyman's life goes something like this: Inspired by Ani DiFranco, a surfing California girl and onetime Roxy Clothing model picks up the guitar at age 15. Friends at parties encourage her to play. She writes songs and realizes that music "can be a voice and an instrument." Yet, she doesn't take it all too seriously until her parents (yes, her parents) pull her aside one night after a gig to tell her, "You should play music and do what makes you happy. You can always go back to school. This might be your calling."

By age 23, she has an album, "Twentythree" with Virgin Records.

So, uh, yeah. Who wouldn't want to be her?

"I feel like in the beginning things happened easily," she said. She wrote music, played shows, got a manager, got a record deal. "Everything happened really smoothly, but I do feel like I put in a lot of hard work," she said.

It doesn't take much to picture Prettyman singing in coffee shops with such songs as "Story" and such lyrics as: "So you write the title, and I'll write the chapters. We can read a story of a love gone disaster. You write the moral, and I'll write the lesson, and we can read of love that kept us guessing."

Prettyman's music is about love (the slightly naive, confident kind). It's the product of a happy, hopeful, romantic, questioning young woman with very little darkness or edge to her. And how could she have an edge with an upbringing like hers?

"My favorite family memory is one Christmas morning, a couple years back, we all woke up and instead of opening presents, we went surfing," she writes on her MySpace page. She grew up north of San Diego, and her dad taught her to surf when she was in grade school. They still surf together today.

With her new album, which she calls "sexy" "bluesy" and "gritty," Prettyman said she is trying to "run from 'You're like the squeaky clean California girl.' There is a side of me with more of an attitude." And on "Hello . . . X," Prettyman tries to put it out there. "I kind of just let myself go a little and not worry about what everybody thinks," including her mom and dad, she said.

"Ooh, my. That song is very sexual," Prettyman said, mimicking her mom's reaction to the song "Handshake." "Who's that about?"

The album was recorded live in 11 days with producers Martin Terefe (KT Tunstall) and Sacha Skarbek (James Blunt, Tunstall) and came on the heels of a romantic breakup. "I just wanted something that sounded a bit like not trying to be uptight. At the end of the day, you're making music. It's supposed to be about how it makes you feel."

The vocals are dirtier and the production pared down, but a listener still might have a hard time finding this attitude of which Prettyman speaks.

She's just too optimistic. "No matter how sad a song is, there's a little hope in the end," she said. She lives in a "cute, little, quaint chateau village near the beach" and loves to get up early in the morning, get coffee and go look at the waves. She's part of Barefoot Wine's Beach Rescue Project to save beaches.

There's not a lot of obvious attitude here.

She does, however, have a depth, as her lyrics suggest, and she mused recently about her drifting friends and her hope for the future. "I'm kind of ready for the whole marriage and kids thing," she said. Or at least, "something bigger than what it is now," she added.

That might seem strange coming from a successful, touring (in a bus!) musician. Or maybe Prettyman knows exactly what she needs to feed her muse. "You have to step away from it awhile so that you have something to write about it. I need an event to happen to shake the mold."

In the meantime, "I'm . . . trying to enjoy the moment," she said.

Not exactly attitude. But she has time for that later.

Tristan Prettyman Opening for G. Love & Special Sauce and the John Butler Trio at Wolf Trap today at 7 p.m. Tickets:$30-34, available at http://www.wolftrap.org or 877-965-3872. For a review of G. Love's new CD, see Page 8. The Download: For a sampling of Tristan Prettyman's music, check out: From "Hello . . . X":· "Hello" · "Just a Little Bit" From "Twentythree":· "Love Love Love" · "Always Feel This Way" · "Simple as It Should Be"