Music
Press
Original voices are hard to find, but you know one when you hear one. TUCKER FINN has such a voice. Her songs are fantastic. They make me smile because they are unlike anyone else's. - Mary Gauthier - Singer / Songwriter
TUCKER FINN’S music is the kind that gets inside both your head and your heart. Her songwriting skills and sense of phrasing paint these wonderful audio pictures that always leave the listener wanting more. She is definitely an artist to keep your ears on the listen for. - Dan Broome - VP Operations & Admin. - True North Records
It was through the OCFF Songs From The Heart Contest that I first discovered TUCKER FINN. The contest brought in about 600 entries [in 2004] and I listened to them all several times. Tucker’s songs stood out at the top of the mountain. The judging panel put her in the top ten. I put her in the top two. Her songs are brilliantly written, poignant, witty, well structured and they made me feel giddy with self discovery. It’s easy to feel jaded after this long in the business. It’s easy to believe one has heard it all before and done better. I can’t describe what a pleasure it is to be proved wrong. To hear someone with a voice so true that it opens both the ears and the heart. - Alex Sinclair - Ontario Council of Folk Festivals Board Member
TUCKER FINN’S present and future success is something that CIUT-Fm Toronto is pleased to associate itself with. Right out of the package her "Demo" was picked up with both curiosity and enthusiasm by a variety of programmers. Combining both a clever and quirky songwriting with solid musicianship she made a lasting impression. At this point we are anxiously awaiting her full release, and have extended an open invitation for her to perform in-studio for a live to air. - Ron Burd - Music Director, CIUT-fm (Toronto)
TUCKER FINN doesn't write songs, she embroiders them with rich and colorful patterns and textures. When combined with her youthfully fresh and conversational voice, they become three minute movies you don't want to miss! - Patty Way - Song Evaluator: Nashville Songwriter's Association International
TUCKER FINN is a true original. Her songs are quirky and out of the ordinary, while at the same time, accessible and catchy. Her voice is perfectly suited to sing them. The grooves are heavy and hypnotic. The playing is tasteful and inspired. I have listened to her demo over and over again and turned everyone who gets in my car into a "Tucker Finn" fan. They leave asking, "Where can I get that?", "When's the full album coming out?", "I'd buy that for sure" and "Where's she performing?" Tucker is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale musical landscape. - Wendell Ferguson - Juno Nominee, 9 time CCMA Award Winner, and guitarist
Discography
Tucker Finn-Tucker Finn (Demo)-Independent-2006
Photos
Bio
Tucker Finn has gone by no fewer than four different names, including one she pulled out of a hat.
She’s known to the police as Catherine Doherty. That’s the name they find on her driver’s license when they pound on the back of her camper shelled pickup truck in the middle of the night somewhere on the road between Toronto and Nashville and find her inside on a mattress trying to get some sleep.
To anyone who’s seen The Jane Waynes on stage across Ontario and Quebec she’s Tucker Doherty, the singer of wrenching ballads with names like Break My Heart.
But check at the registry office and Tucker comes up Sharon Anne Meunier. That’s the name on her original birth certificate, the name her teen-age single mom gave her the same day she gave her up for adoption.
Tucker grew up with her adoptive family, the Dohertys, in Scarborough, Ontario and never sang a note. She wanted to be an animator, or graphic designer…or something, she wasn’t sure what. She ended up with both a degree in architecture and a career as a Hollywood set designer, spending much of 1995 in Mexico City and Vera Cruz drawing sets for Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet.
At the age of 24 Tucker started looking for her birth mom, a search that took three years and inspired her graphic novel Can of Worms (Fantagraphics Books). The title says it all. When she finally found them, Tucker discovered that her birth parents married after giving her up and had two more children. She also discovered that bio-mom and bio-dad had little room for her in their lives.
It’s no surprise that a lot of this shows up in Tucker’s songs. Her music is all about trying to make sense out of a world that usually seems to make no sense at all. “I see sad things in the windows of the shops some people keep,” she sings, “dusty treasures no longer treasured by no one.”
Tucker started writing her own songs and singing them while she was living in Los Angeles and working in film as Catherine Doherty. She bought a four-track recorder “and started to write some typically lame first songs.” She was too shy to play them for anybody or sing in public until she moved back to Toronto and teamed up with Lisa Silverman to form The Jane Waynes and record a successful independent album, Cowboy Songs. The two wanted Nashville-style stage names. Lisa became Travis. Catherine looked inside her cowboy hat, saw the model name, Tucker, and took that. Later she dumped the Doherty and went with Finn, feeling a bond with the conflicted Mark Twain character Huck Finn.
In 2004 Tucker left The Jane Waynes to pursue song writing full time. She now travels back and forth between Toronto and Nashville with her companion Maggie, a gimpy mut, sleeping in the truck to save on hotel bills. Both the truck and the dog are 10 years old and have seen better days. But Tucker Finn is just hitting her stride.
Tucker is currently gearing up to record her first full-length album to be released in the fall of 2007.
She blames nothing on her parents.
TUCKER FINN HIGHLIGHTS
CURRENTLY - Tucker's pre-release is finding it's way onto satellite radio across Canada. She receives daily emails from people who are hearing it in various parts of the country, in places where she has never played solo. The three songs, I've Been Doing Ok, It's Not Perfect Linda and She Can Want Me, can be downloaded for free at her site (www.tuckerfinn.com) or picked up in hard copy at any of her live shows. She encourages people to burn it for friends and email it around the world.
SEPT. 2006 - CIUT-89.5 fm (University of Toronto). Tucker's three song demo (Tucker Finn - Independent), produced by Thomm Jutz in Nashville, TN, held the #7 spot on the campus top 30 chart for the week ending Sept 19th, 2006. It was #14 the week before. Demos are not normally accepted but Ron Burd, Music Director, intrigued by the kraft paper and rubber stamped package, opened it up and gave it a spin. With 80 shows per week (with various producers) and 400 cd's to choose from in the booth, the number 7 spot is an impressive feat for a little pre-release !
OCT. 2006 - Tucker's song, Cowboy Song, was one of 17 tracks released on the Best of NSAI (Nashville Songwriter's Association) Song Evaluation Service and pitched to Nashville Publishers. There are hundreds of songs entered annually.
OCT 2006 - Tucker received an Ontario Arts Council Grant for Recording. (Popular Music Program)
OCT 2005 - Tucker gets the Nashville bug and makes her third trip down, this time, for the for NSAI Song Camp 301. Based on her song writing skills, she was selected to get up on stage at Douglas Corner and play, in the round, alongside Nashville pro-writers, Hugh Prestwood, James Dean Hicks, Tim Johnson, Angela Kaset, Rick Beresford, and Chuck Jones.
2004 - UNISONG Songwriting Competition, USA. Run by professional songwriters. Open to amateur and pros. Tucker's song, Cowboy Song, placed 4th in the Acoustic/Folk category for which there w
Links
