Tristan likes it: Encinitas Prettyman embraces mic, stage

By JIM TRAGESER - Staff Writer | Thursday, March 13, 2008 1:54 PM PDT ∞

Considering the fact that she's signed to megalabel Virgin Records, regularly tours around the world and has her second worldwide release coming up, it seems a bit odd that Tristan Prettyman had no interest in a career in music ---- at least until it happened.

"I never wanted to go do this for a living; it had never crossed my mind, really," she said recently from her home in Encinitas. "I would just play around at friends' houses, and my friends were, 'You have to go play shows.' I was like, 'No, no, this is just a fun thing.'

"I just thought it was crazy to go play a show ---- I thought it was the worst idea ever!"

Credit her friends' persistence, though. They didn't let up on their insistence that Prettyman (performing Wednesday at the Belly Up in Solana Beach) play out, and eventually she did go to an open mic at Robbie's Roadhouse in Leucadia.

"The first time singing into a microphone, and I was addicted," she said. "Then I thought this was pretty cool."

The fact that nobody else in the Prettyman family has shown much aptitude for music also would have seemed to predict against her current success.

"We had a guitar in the house, but no one ever really played that," she said.

But her mother was an aerobic instructor and "she had a lot of mixed dance tapes" playing in the house, Prettyman said, which exposed her to a lot of different styles.

Growing up in Del Mar (she graduated from Torrey Pines High), Prettyman said her first serious foray into music came when her older brother bought her an Ani DiFranco tape. "I got the guitar out and tried to play" along with the tape.

Playing clarinet in school in the second grade had taught her that she could play along with a song, Prettyman said ---- a skill she found intact as she began exploring popular music in high school.

"I've always been pretty good at figuring out a song," she said.

Still, becoming a real musician ---- a singer and guitarist ---- was the result of a lot of hard work.

"It definitely took a long time, over the course of probably five or six years hanging with friends, people showing me chords here and there."

When she enrolled at MiraCosta College, she made a belated effort to learn how to read music ---- but ended up giving it up.

"I enrolled in a voice class and a guitar class. I had the hardest time ---- it was like going backwards. My teacher said it was like trying to teach a kid English who already knows all the slang words.

"Part of me wishes I did know theory and scales, but I also think if I did I wouldn't have the style I have now."

If most of the world discovered Prettyman only with the 2005 release of "Twentythree" on Virgin Records, in-the-know pizza eaters in North County had been listening to her recordings for years.

"I'd make my own CDs and I would sell them at the pizza place while I was working, and word kind of spread," she said of her earliest recordings. "That's probably when it clicked ---- I thought, 'Wow, I can make songs and people will pay me?' "

"Twentythree" sold well enough for Virgin to issue a sophomore release, "Hello," due out April 15. Of the new CD, Prettyman said it feels "bluesier to me; a little grittier." She attributed the difference to "doing the record in England. ... When you take yourself out of your element, it sort of creates its own environment of change."

But she said she also believes the new record is more representative of her music.

"This new record feels more pieced-together. More whole. Even the sequence ---- the first song is a nice transition coming out of the first record, and then ends on something totally different from anything else I've ever done. It's really nice ---- it goes from where I was through all the transitions I've made and the changes I've made.

"It showcases all the things in my world the last two years."

Tristan Prettyman

When: 8 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach

Tickets: $15

Info: (858)481-8140 or bellyup.com

Web: tristanprettyman.com

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