Tenielle

She sings, plays guitar, writes songs, and drives trains...

Tenielle Neda Musulin started singing from the cradle, played church hymns on her mum’s organ at 6, wrote her first song at 9 and picked up a guitar at 14.

Tenielle was born on a banana plantation in Carnarvon, WA. After spending her High School years in Perth, at just 17 Tenielle moved to Karratha in the far north remote Pilbara region of WA, where she qualified as one of the youngest train drivers in Australia, driving Iron Ore trains to the port at Dampier. While riding the trains, she would try out new melodies to the sound of the engines.

Pushing past her shyness, Tenielle entered and won a local battle of the musos in 2005, giving her faith to record an EP, ‘All To Myself’, which made the finals of the West Australian Music Industry Song of the Year Awards.

In September 2009, Tenielle made it to the Top 17 of Australian Idol, making it to the “Wildcard” round, gathering notable feedback from Idol judges Ian “Dicko” Dickson (“You have got a lot going on and you’re intriguing”), Kyle Sandilands (“I was fully sucked in, I had all the weirdo tingling feeling I should have had”) and JD (“You’re a really beautiful girl with a really beautiful voice”).

Finding it hard to balance her passion for music and her job on the trains, in November 2009, Tenielle moved to the big smoke of Sydney to continue pursuing her dream, writing, performing, and focusing on her craft.

Her hopes of performing in Tamworth came true in December when she made it to the finals for the Telstra Road To Tamworth competition, performing at the hallowed Tamworth Country Music Festival in January 2010, and taking out the Award in the Best Performance category, in the process winning a trip to Nashville to write, record and showcase her extraordinary talent.

A country girl at heart – something which manifests itself in her tone of song, voice and uplifting vibrato – the emerging country talent sings sweet and soulful melodies with honest, emotional lyrics, inspired from love, life, and everyday experiences. And with a compelling and intriguing stage presence, Tenielle’s approach to music is refreshingly honest and direct.