Raw And Nervy

Sonia Tetlow’s sense of optimism.

- Brett Milano

When Sonia Tetlow started playing around town, doing raw and nervy songs with an acoustic guitar, she got told she was too rock for folk and too folk for rock. To some extent that’s been the story of her career. Her current album Now is a full-fledged rock set, but the songs remain raw and nervy, with a personal detail snuck into every catchy chorus hook.

“I don’t know any other way of doing it,” she says. “That’s the kind of writer I am. I’d say that 90 percent of the time it’s from my personal experience, but sometimes I’m an observer—as long as there is a true emotional anchor in the song, it doesn’t have to be my story per se. It has to be something that I can feel so if I’m expressing it, it feels like truth to me. Even if you’re sharing something specific to yourself, if you write a good song and make good art, then people aren’t seeing you—hopefully they’re seeing themselves in it. That’s always been my goal.”

After playing the Neutral Ground and other acoustic clubs in the ’90s, she formed a power trio, the Sonia Tetlow Band. Given the songs she was writing, it’s no surprise that she gravitated toward a band sound. What may be surprising is that she wound up as Cowboy Mouth’s bassist for three years, playing on their creative-comeback album