WORDS / KODY FORD

From stepping in front of the church house to sing a hymn under her mother’s direction or playing guitar for family friends at her father’s urging, Tessa Kate knew she wanted to be a singer. Frankly, it was never not an option.

She says, “I had a strict childhood but I was never told I couldn’t do anything.  So there was never a second guess when I said I want to be a singer.”

The Harrison, AR, native recently finished a stint on season 14 of American Idol. While the experience was brief, the learning curve during her week in Los Angeles was steep and taxing, physically and mentally.

“You get pushed to the limit physically; I even blacked out the last night,” she says. “It was that difficult but you don’t know that you can do it until you do. My family really helped and provided my backbone. It was amazing to have my brother and mom there for me to call every night if I needed to get built back up.”

Prior to landing on American Idol, Tessa had bi-weekly gigs at the Chateau on the Lake in Missouri and the Paddle Wheel Pub on the Branson Landing. Throughout the summer and fall, she stayed busy working the crowds, honing her skills and pushing herself.

“If you’re gonna grow with something, it helps to have a lot of practice,” she says. “Playing all those months helped confidence-wise, vocally, even with the guitar. It was a prelude to American Idol.”

Idol had never really been on Tessa’s agenda.  Though she appreciated the platform it provided for artists, she hadn’t watched the show a lot. Still, people would approach her and say they would love to have the opportunity to vote for her on the show. When she heard that the producers were holding auditions in Nebraska, the last stop on their tour, she packed her bags and headed northwest.

“It was a very spur of the moment decision so I couldn’t change my mind,” she says. “Doing it was kinda just because of being encouraged by people who had faith in me.”

Her musical childhood had been shaped by two worlds. The church hymns of her mother and the outlaw country of her father, who passed away when she was 18. As a tribute to him, she chose Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” for her Idol audition. She pushed past her nervousness and nailed the tune, switching from a mid-tempo ballad to the train track rhythm Cash made famous after the first verse. The judges loved it with Harry Connick, Jr., commenting that it reminded him of classic 70s country like Barbara Mandrell. She walked out of the room with a ticket for Hollywood Week.

Grueling might be the most concise way to describe Tessa’s experience during Hollywood week. Her first night, she slept around five hours. Things digressed from there. Some nights she only slept for two hours or less before waking back up to start the grind again. After a long day of competition, the contestants were then briefed on what they would do the next day and began rehearsals until early in the morning.

“They’re trying to thin out the week that’s for sure.  I had to be up at six and most of us didn’t get to bed until 4 or 5 AM. Of course, us girls have got to primp…I felt like I was in the military for a week,” she joked.

Much of the week was spent working with a group of contestants. Camaraderie quickly developed amongst Tessa and her teammates as they learned songs and rehearsed choreography for tunes like “Mama’s Broken Heart” by Miranda Lambert. “We were all kinda country rock girls and all happen to know the song pretty well,” she says about their choice. Throughout the week, she switched between genres to show diversity in her style as she also sang  “Bulletproof” by La Roux and “Try” by P!nk.

Each night was different for the group. They never received feedback, only waited to find out the results the next day. The suspense built by the end of the week. The day that she was sent home wasn’t aired on television, but emotions were high. Still, Tessa sees her Idol experience as a stepping-stone towards success, not a setback.

“I’ve always just been the one to say, ‘If it’s meant to be it will be,’” Tessa says. “I was like, ‘Wow God, this is exciting.’ I knew if I got cut it wasn’t because I wasn’t good enough. I was already the top 300 in the country and I was down to the last 77 on the last day. I couldn’t have imagined [the experience] if I wanted to, so it was awesome.  It’s hard to make that break into the industry and [Idol] gave me a huge opportunity by showing the audition.”

Now that she’s back home, Tessa is looking forward.  She will record a six-song EP at a studio in Michigan in late March, but first she has to pay the bills.  She is playing several fundraising gigs throughout the area including Pressroom in Bentonville on Feb. 28 at 7 PM.

For Tessa, songwriting is a creative process that often lends itself to self-discovery as she often realizes things about herself she did not even know she was feeling.

“[A song] just kind of comes out of me and it is what it is,” she says. “Some songs I write just for me to hear once cause I need to say it out loud. Some songs are for others. When I think I’ve written something that will speak to someone else, then I feel like I’ve done something good.”

Hear Tessa’s cover of “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons here.  Watch her American Idol audition below.

Photo appears courtesy of Artistic Puppy Creative.

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