Tristan Prettyman

Singer, songwriter

San Diego native Tristan Prettyman rode her fashion-model good looks and her surfboard to early exposure in Southern California's singer-songwriter scene, but she capitalized on that exposure with a varied set of songs that ranged in mood from seaside bliss to anger and regret. Of the song "In Bloom," from Prettyman's successful sophomore release Hello … x, Alisa Cohen of Entertainment Weekly wrote that "it's a fitting song title for an artist who's maturing by the minute." Building on musical collaborations with various California artists, Prettyman scored international successes and seemed a likely emerging star as of mid-2008.

Tristan Prettyman was born in San Diego on May 23, 1982, and raised in the city's seaside northern suburb of Del Mar. Unsure of the origins of her unusual family name, she has begun to investigate it with the help of a relative and other Prettymans she has met online. Her mother was a microbiologist, and her father at first worked as a building contractor but retired from that line of work and became a surfing instructor. Among his students was his daughter Tristan, who took up surfing in the sixth grade. She noted in the biography on her MySpace web page that she "grew up in a house that could pass for a surf museum," and even surfed competitively in high school. She was also interested in music and was inspired to learn to play the guitar when a friend gave her a copy of singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco's album Puddle Dive. She suffered from Attention Deficit Disorder and decided that guitar lessons might not turn out well. Instead, she began teaching herself on an old acoustic guitar of her father's and stuck with it until she had mastered it.

While still a high school student, Prettyman was chosen as a model for the Roxy line of surf wear, and she thought about a career in the swimwear industry. She enrolled at MiraCosta College in Oceanside, taking art classes, but her interest in music continued to grow. She began performing at parties and bars, and one night her parents, who had been encouraging her to finish her college degree, came to hear her sing at the Belly Up tavern in San Diego. Their reaction wasn't stereotypical. "They pulled me aside afterwards," Prettyman told Paul Freeman of the Palo Alto Daily News. "My mom was like, ‘Me and your Dad talked and we think that you should just go play music for a living. This seems to make you happy.’ So, with their blessing, I decided to give it a try."

Prettyman got her first break when surfer Chris Malloy and filmmaker Taylor Steele, at work on their surfing-themed film Shelter (2001), heard her at an open-mic night and asked her to record a song for the soundtrack. The result was "Anything at All," which got the attention of other songwriters in the area and led to appearances with such acts as G. Love & Special Sauce, Gavin DeGraw, and the John Butler Trio. She opened for Jason Mraz on his national tour and found not only a career boost but also, for a time, a boyfriend. Another influence was surfer-singer-songwriter Jack Johnson. "We met long ago, when I dated a friend of his," Prettyman told the New York Post. "Early on, Jack was one of the people who's steered me, helped me stay on my own path."

Signed to the Virgin label, Prettyman went to New York to record her first album under producer Josh Deutsch, with an assist from Mraz on guitar and vocals. The album was called Twentythree, and not just because Prettyman had turned 23 on May 23, 2005. "My brother introduced me to the 23 Enigma, a theory that 23 is cosmically very magical," Prettyman told the New York Post. "After he told me about it, it started appearing everywhere." The album showed up on Billboard magazine's Heatseekers chart, devoted to new and emerging artists, and Prettyman spent much of the next 16 months touring, with only brief tropical surfing breaks. She opened for James Blunt and John Mellencamp and also did solo shows, visiting every state of the United Sates except for Alaska, Nebraska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. Notably for a little-known artist, Prettyman gained a following in some foreign countries, including New Zealand, Singapore, and Japan, where she got a tattoo representing the number 23 in Japanese.

Prettyman and Mraz broke up during the interval between the release of Twentythree and her second album, Hello … x, and at first the new material Prettyman wrote for her sophomore release reflected the emotions connected with the relationship. "They were about breakups and I decided I didn't want to make a sad record and have to relive all that stuff. I just wanted to learn from it and move on," Prettyman explained to Freeman. "So I didn't record any of those songs. But that was very therapeutic. I needed to get all of that out before all the songs for Hello … x could start to come." She became more open to songwriting collaborations with others, and "Madly," which became a free Internet download promoted at Starbucks coffee houses, was co-written with Kevin Griffin of the group Better than Ezra.

The end result, Prettyman explained to Andrew Leahy of the Washington Times, was a group of songs with "different shades of color. At the end of the day, I'm just one person in a body, and this record shows all the colors in me while still being fluid and complete." The new album, titled Hello … x, was recorded in London, England, produced by Sacha Skarbek (co-composer of Blunt's "You're Beautiful") and Mraz's producer Martin Terefe, and filled with bluesy songs that had more substance than those on the breezy Twentythree. With sales of 18,000 copies in its first week of release and a debut at number 27 on Billboard's general top 200 albums chart, Hello … x marked a commercial advance over its predecessor as well.

Prettyman donated the proceeds from one of the tracks on Hello … x to the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, receiving in return a set of "green tags"—certificates that offset the 1,295 pounds of carbon dioxide emitted during the recording of the album. Hello … x made Entertainment Weekly's "Must List," and the magazine commented, "We welcome the dreamy beach babe's evolution to brisk blues diva on her lush second album." With developing songwriting abilities and the enduring appeal of the Southern California lifestyle supporting her career momentum—she described herself in a MySpace profile as "Loving all things Ocean, Organic and Fun"—Prettyman looked like a star on the rise.

For the Record …

Born on May 23, 1982, in San Diego, CA; grew up in Del Mar, CA. Education: Attended MiraCosta College, Oceanside, CA.

Contributed song "Anything at All" to film Shelter, 2001; signed to Virgin label, released Twentythree, 2005; released Hello … x, 2008.

Addresses: Record company—Virgin Records, 150 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10011. Web site—Tristan Prettyman Official Web site: http://www.tristanprettyman.com.

Selected discography

Love, 2003 (self-released EP).

Twentythree, Virgin, 2005.

Hello … x, Virgin, 2008.

Sources

Periodicals

Entertainment Weekly, April 25, 2008, p. 119.

New York Post, September 25, 2008, p. 88.

Palo Alto Daily News, March 21, 2008.

Post and Courier (Charleston, SC), July 13, 2006, p. E6.

Washington Times, June 27, 2008, p. B5.

Online

"About Tristan Prettyman," Tristan Prettyman Official MySpace page, http://www.myspace.com/tristanprettyman (June 27, 2008).

"Profiles: Tristan Prettyman," American Songwriter, http://www.americansongwriter.com/site.php?em3156= 192181_-1__0_˜0_-1_5_2008_0_0&content=profiles_list&content=profiles (June 27, 2008).

"Tristan Prettyman," All Music Guide,http://www.allmusic.com (June 27, 2008).

—James M. Manheim