Indie folk artist Tina & Her Pony never had much interest in horses.
“Really it’s a play on the fact that they say that every little girl wants a pony when they’re younger,” said Tina Collins, the singer and multi-instrumentalist behind the project.
“And I never wanted that. All I wanted to do was sing and play music and travel, and now I get to do that. So, Tina and Her Pony is my vehicle to make my dream come true.”
Tina & Her Pony will perform Sunday, June 18, at Monterey Court. But the Asheville, North Carolina, musician is no foreigner to the Southwest.
Beginning in 2010, Collins spent four years in Taos, New Mexico. The serene, high desert landscape provided her with ample songwriting fuel, and to this day, the natural imagery of the Southwest still creeps into the sound, according to the singer.
“That was where Tina & Her Pony really got started in 2010, so it’s sort of a second hometown for me. There’s a lot of fans and friends and family there,” Collins said.
“Just living in such a beautiful place, every day I would just step out of my house in Taos, and it never got old. It was a really inspiring place to live, in the sense that it made me want to write a lot.”
Collins has released three albums under the name: an eponymous 2012 LP, 2017’s “Champion,” and most recently, 2023’s “Marigolds.” She first became hooked on bluegrass festivals while living in Tampa in her early 20s. The accessibility of the genre lured her in.
“I’ve found it to be so wide open as far as anything can be a song. I listened to it, and I understood, because it’s so simple. So, for me that was kind of an ‘in’ to music. I was like, ‘OK, I play these three chords and riff on these themes of, like, trains and people named Caroline.’ The themes are so recycled that you can do your own version.”
That potential for artistic liberty piqued Collins’ interest. Intoxicated by bluegrass and Appalachian folk’s adaptability, her aim from the get-go was to innovate, to push forward from antiquity and transcend the limits of those traditional sounds.
“I love just blending it with other stuff. For instance, one of the most basic things about Tina & Her Pony is that it’s really heavy sounding in the cello, and cello is not traditionally in bluegrass music. That’s a new thing that started in the early aughts.
“I’m not a huge fan of the fiddle. I know that’s not a popular opinion, but I feel like the cello is so much softer on the ears.”
Collins’ knack for musical metamorphosis is ever-present in Tina & Her Pony’s 2023 album, “Marigolds.” The musician sat in the producer’s chair for the first time on this record, and while at first a bit intimidated, she quickly found her feet, and the process “turned out to just be really fun.”
According to Collins, her new role allowed her more freedom over the album’s sound. On the project, she experiments with deep, driving electric bass lines, spacey electric guitar licks and groovy, mellow drums (listen to “Swings,” “Pull You Close”).
“At first it really had more of a bluegrass influence, and that’s really changed over the years to be more like indie folk, like more of a smooth sound,” the musician said. “I don’t even know if it’s Appalachian anymore.
“I definitely was able to explore more pop and soul, and that was really fun for me.
“I co-produced it with one of my good friends Ryan Furstenberg, and he was also the tracking engineer for the album. I picked him specifically because he has more of a pop sensibility when it comes to production than I’ve typically gone for in the past, and I wanted to bring more of that in.”
Collins’ sense of innovation is particularly clear on “Fly Around,” her version of the traditional bluegrass song “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss.” The track plays with an in-the-pocket drum beat and a twangy electric guitar lead and preserves little from the original besides a plucked banjo riff which marches through the song’s 2-minute duration.
The artist includes these reimagined classics on her records to pay homage to her roots and her fondness for the old. Of course, no tune reaches the album untouched by a Tina twist.
“I just love traditional music. It has given me so much, so I just hope to give back to the canon of that genre,” Collins said.
“It’s really fun for me as a queer musician to write new lyrics for a traditional song because it changes the perspective when it’s being sung by a woman, like with the pronouns,”she continued. “How can we make traditional music more queer?”
Tina & Her Pony w/Sharkk Heartt and Stephy Leigh Griffin
WHEN: 6 p.m. Sunday, June 18
WHERE: Monterey Court, 505 W. Miracle Mile, Tucson
COST: No cover
INFO: montereycourtaz.com
