Tattletale Saints go marchin' in

Tattletale Saints say the hardships they've endured in the US have been worth it.

Nashville is the springboard for folk duo to drum up fresh sounds.

When CY Winstanley and Vanessa McGowan, aka Tattletale Saints, packed their belongings and left Auckland last year to chase a dream in Nashville, they had no way of knowing what lay ahead.

Fast-forward to now and Tattletale Saints are living that dream. That's not to say the past year has been a breeze.

Laying down roots in a city as iconic as Nashville has been tough for the Kiwi duo. But they've done it. And although they're home touring right now, the bright lights of Music City beckon once again.

"We were both anticipating that it would be quite a competitive scene because there are so many musicians vying for the same kind of prize.

"But people are so friendly and so welcoming," says Winstanley. "I don't know if it's because we're foreigners ..."

"I think they're just lovely," chips in McGowan.

"I don't think Nashville is some kind of golden city where everyone is amazing.

"But we've definitely lucked out because we've fallen in with a bunch of great folks."

Although Winstanley and McGowan are based in Nashville, they've spent long, taxing stretches on the road touring, just to make ends meet.

"Our visas meant we could only work as Tattletale Saints so we couldn't get other jobs in Nashville. We could only make money touring. I mean, Nashville is cheap to live and it's wonderfully inspiring, but if we weren't out on the road, we were haemorrhaging money," says McGowan.

But the moments of hardship have all been worth it and that's why they're returning to Nashville after this tour.

"It's a much bigger market. There's much more opportunity for radio play because there are more stations that play our kind of music; the ceiling on the number of venues we can hit is so high and to be somewhere we can tour a lot, is great," says McGowan.

"For me it's the music," says Winstanley. "The capacity for jamming, the capacity for co-writing. I love being around people that love the music I love - bluegrass and Americana, that kind of stuff.

"Being in a culture so rich with that kind of music is what I really love."

Back here, the Tattletale Saints' tour coincides with the release of a new single, I Did This to Myself, which also signals a new musical direction for the duo, that is sometimes now a trio.

"We've used this last year or so to start to form this sound - going on the road with drums," explains McGowan.

Winstanley describes the song as "considerably different" from those on How Red Is the Blood, which won the 2014 New Zealand Music Award for Folk Album of the year.

"We're not changing it for the sake of it," adds McGowan. "We've followed where the sound has gone. It's still Tattletale Saints.

"We didn't want it to sound like a giant leap away, we're just growing and being influenced by different things."

• Tattletale Saints play the Tuning Fork in Auckland on February 14. For more tour dates visit tattletalesaints.com