Role Model Talks ‘Incredible’ Experience Touring With Gracie Abrams: ‘Like a Wholesome Sweat Tour’
Charli XCX and Troye Sivan may be bringing the party across North America with their Sweat tour, but there’s another dynamic duo touring right now for a less club-oriented and more heartbroken audience: Role Model and Gracie Abrams.
“It feels like a perfect little match,” Role Model, 27, whose real name is Tucker Pillsbury, told Us Weekly exclusively. “It’s kind of like a wholesome Sweat tour.”
While Charli XCX and Sivan’s music has more of a party vibe, Pillsbury and Abrams’ recent releases lean toward melancholia, with themes of heartbreak, homesickness and coming of age.
As one fan’s T-shirt reads in a photo shared via Role Model’s Instagram account: “Therapists hate them.”
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Pillsbury was gearing up to announce his own headlining world tour, No Place Like Tour, in support of his sophomore album, Kansas Anymore — “it was scheduled and everything,” he said — when he got a call from Abrams, 25.
“She invited me on the tour, and I was like, ‘I think we have to do this. This is incredible. I would love that,’” he said. “She’s been a friend for years, and I’ve been a fan for years, and so to be touring with a friend like that, it’s pretty lucky.”
Pillsbury’s team was able to push his tour’s start date to November so he could join Abrams on The Secret of Us Tour, supporting her album of the same name. At a recent show, fans at the venue — and then later, millions of fans who watched the footage via TikTok and Instagram — were pleasantly surprised when Abrams brought Pillsbury on stage to perform a duet version of her song “Feels Like.”
“That was insane. Getting on stage with her was incredible. It felt like a very big moment for me,” Pillsbury told Us of their joint performance, adding it was “the moment of the year” for him. “I texted her right after, and I was like, ‘I know it sounds corny, but that was an honor. For me to be on the stage with you is really cool.’”
Pillsbury will soon get the chance to make some more solo memories when he embarks on his own world tour in November. Aptly titled No Place Like Tour, the string of shows stretch from Dublin to Madrid, across Europe and the U.S. before wrapping up in the Pacific Northwest next spring.
While Pillsbury admits he has only seen The Wizard of Oz once, he feels deeply connected to the iconic lines “there’s no place like home” and “we’re not in Kansas anymore” and used the musical references to drive home the album’s themes of homesickness and heartbreak.
“The theme [of the album] is nostalgia and looking back at a place or person, but mostly a place that you were in your life that you’re trying to get back to, relive or fix,” Pillsbury told Us of Kansas Anymore, acknowledging some of the confusion the title produced. “When I announced the album, everybody thought I was from Kansas all of a sudden, which kind of bummed me out because I’m finally in a place in my life where I’m championing New England and where I’m from.”
In actuality, Pillsbury grew up in Maine, and his new folk-tinted sound was heavily influenced by the music of his upbringing.
“My main goal was to make my own version of an album that felt like home to me, sonically, that was warm and nostalgic and had some folky sounds in it because that’s kind of the music scene in Maine,” he explained. “I love where I’m from in Maine. You have my house that I grew up in that my parents still live in. There’s a huge strawberry field across the street. My neighbor has a farm with cows and chicks and then you can also walk down the street and you’re at the beach.”
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He continued: “Because we have such harsh seasons [in New England], I think it does something to the people there where as soon as summer hits you make the most out of it. … I think having such harsh, contrasting seasons is really good and builds character.”
With lyrics like “I'm the child of my mother, New England–born and raised / Where the common sense is common as a nose job in L.A.,” in “The Dinner,” one can’t help but think of another rising artist who sings about his upbringing in New England: Noah Kahan.
“I found out [Noah] had an EP called Cape Elizabeth, which is the town I’m from. It’s a small, little town in southern Maine, and I was so curious what his connection was,” Pillsbury told Us before hinting at a potential collaboration between the two artists. “Hopefully, we are going to hang out in October in Maine. … He seems very sweet.”
Tickets for There’s No Place Like Tour are on sale now.
