We’d like to introduce you to Grace Fellows, the songwriter behind Towse.
Towse’s new single, We’d Start a Garden out May 26th.
Hi Grace, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I fell in love with music as a young child, my dad liked to play country songs on the guitar and he would get me to sing with him, after he died when I was 9, it was a cathartic sort of journaling experience to write songs. I first started writing at the age of 11 and by 14, I had formed my first band that performed around Ventura County. After studying music at Ventura College, I transferred to CalArts where the first version of Towse was formed. Throughout my time at CalArts and after, I lived in the San Fernando Valley, where I released the Towse album “Change” now available exclusively on BandCamp. At that time, me and the previous iteration of the band played at the Troubadour and some local festivals had a 2-year residency at a venue in my hometown of Ojai and hosted a quarterly house show series. In 2018, I moved back to Ojai where I focused on developing my production skills and musicianship, as well as building a lovely little community on YouTube. I continued to perform as Towse but as a solo act or small group as opposed to the sometimes 7-piece band of previous years.
In 2020, I was accepted into a master’s program at BIMM, London. In 2021 I moved to London to start the course, where I met Mark Gunner, the bassist who is featured on “We’d Start a Garden,” our first single, out May 26th. Since completing the master’s degree last August, we have been recording music and performing, including a tour of California this February and a tour of the UK this March. We are so excited to finally be releasing music, and we’re planning to spend most of April-June finishing the “We’d Start a Garden” music video and sharing every step of the release online with our fans. This summer, we’re very excited to be touring the West Coast of the US again, with dates across California, Oregon, and Washington. If you’re interested in coming to one of our shows, checkout our website and social media for more information.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I think it’s rarely a smooth road for artists. I think, for me, I realized there was a lot I needed to learn; skills I needed to work on, like technical musicianship, but also organization, tools for motivation, and systems to support my mental health. I needed to become more comfortable with self-reflection, learn to take criticism in a healthy way and understand the music industry itself better. I think, like a lot of artists when they are young, I was told that I was talented and I was going places. I didn’t really understand how to put in the work to actually go those places. I think, thanks to my time in London, I can see the road ahead of me a lot more clearly now than I used to be able to. I appreciate my community here for that endlessly and also ngl my therapist, haha. I am now at a place where music is my job and absolutely nothing could make me happier.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I like to say I write songs about things you talk about in therapy. Our current set includes songs about trauma, grief, self-hate, the creative process, and breakups. I love writing about not just what happens externally but how we as humans can process it and how it physically feels to experience difficult emotions. I am known for making people cry at shows; it’s happened at the last few 100%. The setup lately has been me on piano and vocals, my partner Corwin on violin and vocals, and often our bassist Mark also adding percussion and vocals through his very impressive and unique bass setup. Corwin is also an absolutely insane improviser and emotional player. Lately, we’ve been called a “power trio” on more than one occasion. There’s also something expressly humorous and kitschy about the act, which I find really fun; we aren’t taking ourselves too seriously. The feedback I often get from audience members is that they feel really seen and understood like we’ve really hit them in the heart with these songs, and yet it was fun. Like we’ve taken them on a journey to some dark places, but we’ve brought them back home safely. I am really happy to hear this as my driving force for creating is absolutely to help others on their journeys the way music has helped me.
Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
The best was to support us is of course just to follow us on social media, stream our new single We’d Start a Garden (out May 26th), and come to some live shows! We do also have a Patreon and some merch available on BandCamp. The Patreon has some really fun sections for lessons and commissions, which I always enjoy doing, and I make a lot of chord charts for indie hits and other useful stuff for our Patrons, as well as making available some exclusive demos and so forth. We are always so interested in collaborating with events organizers, photographers, videographers, producers, etc. we love to jam, co-write songs, and just make stuff. Our DMs are always open <3
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.towselikehouse.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/towselikehouse/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/towselikehouse/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTH8NVPTABP9kptQLrNdKIA
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@towselikehouse
Image Credits
Jack Fosberry, Eva Petr, Martha May
