By Michael MacLeod
SCOTS songstress turned Arctic explorer KT Tunstall says she wants to move to Greenland.
In a honeymoon with a difference, she and drummer husband Luke Bullen teamed up with other musicians to witness climate change near the North Pole.
Despite the sub-zero temperatures, newlywed KT didn’t want to come back home to sunny Scotland.
The expedition to the aptly named Disko Bay came to an end last week, and since her return KT has been dreaming of setting up a home in the Arctic.
She said: “I love it here and I don’t want to leave. It’s so dreamlike.”
She joined fellow musicians Jarvis Cocker, Martha Wainwright and Feist in a 40-strong crew of artists and scientists on charity Cape Farewell’s sea journey around the west coast of Greenland.
Writing in her online tour diary, KT said: “I feel like I could live in Uummannaq, it feels like a good town with good people in it.
“But this is an exceptionally hard place to live.
“Thank god they have access to mad coloured paint; this little town looks like Tobermory or Balamory after Bungle and Zippy decided to buy timeshares – clumps of multi-coloured houses perched on the perma-frost.”
Between eco experiments on the 11-day voyage, the musicians rocked Disko Bay’s tiny pubs with impromptu collaborations.
Locals at the town’s Murphy’s Bar were stunned to see KT joined onstage by two of the trip’s scientists, Carol Cotterill and Emily Venables.
But KT admits she was “floored” by the talent surrounding her, which also included Ryuichi Sakamoto – an Academy Award-winning, Grammy-winning, Golden Globe-winning Japanese musician based in New York.
She added: “We all played a gig in a bar, I don’t know what happened but the great boot from outwith crushed my mojo.
“Floored by quiet endings, the rip of other roars, it’s not good when you reject yourself in a Greenlandic bar faced with the brilliance of Cocker, Wainwright, Sakamoto, Vanessa Carlton and Feist.
“It was not my night and my heart was twisted up like kid’s balloon and I imagine looks like a poodle.”
The trip aimed to inspire the creative team to respond to climate change both in the Arctic and on their return.
But before penning any new Iceberg-inspired songs, there are more pressing matters on KT’s mind.
She told a weekend interview: “I’m a citizen of a country that needs to drastically change its behaviour towards an increasingly hostile and retaliating environment in order to lead the charge for change.”
