Twinnie takes the country road as York singer branches out

Now meet Twinnie, rising country singer-songwriter at 31, learning the ropes in Nashville and making her name at Country2Country's showcases at Berlin, Munich, Cologne and London this month as she releases her debut EP, Better When I’m Drunk, after signing to the major label BMG.

"I've been on stage all my life; it's the only thing I know," says Twinnie, who took her first steps at Isobel Dunn's dance school in York."So whether it's theatre, music, film, TV, I've been doing it since I was four. "

As a child, Twinnie performed in the dance ensemble in the Grand Opera House pantomimes. In 2003, she graduated to playing the lead, Dorothy, in The Wizard Of Oz in in the Grand Opera House Summer Youth Project, having appeared as Bet in Oliver! in 2001 and Lilly in Annie in 2002. "I was 16 and I thought I might have been too tall for Dorothy, but [director] Simon Barry said I was the right choice," she recalls.

Living in Haxby Road at the time, she left the Joseph Rowntree School to study dance and musical theatre for three years at Phil Winston's Theatre Works in Blackpool. By 21, she was starring as Velma in Chicago, playing the Grand Opera House on tour in 2009 and becoming the show's poster girl on the London Underground for the London production.

There were West End roles in We Will Rock You, the short-lived Desperately Seeking Susan and a year as the Latino character Jazmin in the original London cast of Flashdance at the Shaftsbury Theatre from autumn 2010. These roles found her playing opposite Marti Pellow, Jimmy Osmond, Gary Wilmot and Destiny’s Child’s Michelle Williams and dancing to the choreography of Arlene Phillips, Karen Bruce and the American Andy Blankenbuler.

Twinnie-Lee Moore as Velma in Chicago at the Grand Opera House, York, in April 2009

 She competed in the first series of The Voice in March 2012, when singing Miley Cyrus's The Climb, and went on to appear in the films Iron Clad 2 and Strangelove, starring with Stephen Rea and Ed Stoppard, in 2014, a year when she made her soap debut as Porsche McQueen in Channel 4's Hollyoaks that November.

Yet all the while, she felt drawn to making her own music. "To be honest, music was probably the first one I started out wanting to do, which people don't know about," she says. "But people pay their dues to pay their mortgage."

Now, Twinnie is concentrating on cutting a swathe in the country music world. "Coming from York, none of my family were in the music industry, but I got my first keyboard at seven," she recalls."Over here, you don't know about how to go about getting into the country world, whereas in America everyone knows to go to Nashville.

"It's just that my journey has had a lot of detours, but music has always been my main focus, though doing musicals, I wasn't doing my own songs. Even when I was doing We Will Rock You at 19 with Brian May, I was playing in dive bars too at the weekend, and now I have so much to talk about in my songs, as people only see the end result, not the journey."

Twinnie has taken ten years to secure a record deal. "Ten years ago, country music wasn't even 'a thing' over here, but I feel lucky now that I'm in the early stages, getting some heat with country music growing here, where it's not all country boots and hats!" she says.

Twinnie has been co-writing with Grammy Award-winning writers and producers Nathan Chapman, Liz Rose and Dave Barns; she has recorded in Nashville, Los Angeles, London and Sweden, and now here comes her debut EP featuring Better When I’m Drunk, Type Of Girl and the melancholic Superhero.

The artwork for Twinnie's debut EP

"I have no shame in highlighting my flaws and being vulnerable," she says. "Each song shows a different side of my personality and is an introduction of what to expect from my debut album.”

Look out for the video accompanying the title track, whose lyrics "show the humour and the truth in what people actually feel on a night out versus the morning after”.

"All the strings to my bow are in that video: the acting, the dancing, the modelling, but I also grew up watching Hollywood musicals, especially Judy Garland, which I loved," says Twinnie.

"I don't think there are many 'triple threat' performers like me, so I want to tell the story not just in the song, but in my performance too, and because I've been doing this for so long, all I'm trying to do is make a connection, whether as a singer, an actor or a dancer."

A video for Type Of Girl will follow, along with more sessions with co-writers for her debut album, "though I don't want to rush it", she says.

Her momentum is building: Twinnie's headline show on April 17 at The Lexington in her adopted home city of London has sold out.