The ink had barely dried on Tora Woloshin’s record deal with rapper B.o.B.’s fledgling No Genre label in early October when she found herself packing up and heading out for the most extensive tour of her career.
On Tuesday night in Pensacola, Florida, the 25-year-old Tucson singer-songwriter joined B.o.B. on stage for two songs in the first of 23 concerts. The tour criss-crosses the country before pulling into Rialto Theatre on Monday; it wraps up in late November.
“This is the first real, real tour I’ve gone on,” Woloshin, a contestant on the first season of the short-lived “The X-Factor” reality show, said Tuesday afternoon during a phone call outside the Pensacola theater.
The tour officially kicked off Tuesday, but in a special concert Monday night, Woloshin shared the stage with B.o.B., singing the chorus to his hit “Airplanes” and dueting on his version of “Lean On Me.”
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“She was like a pro, didn’t miss a beat,” B.o.B. — the stage name for Georgia native Bobby Ray Simmons Jr. — said later Tuesday.
Simmons said he learned of Woloshin after hearing her 2012 EPK.
“I looked and I said, ‘Oh my God, this girl is No Genre’,” he said. “I couldn’t really pinpoint it. And I loved it. I wanted to see more. She just pulled me in — her look pulled me in, her energy, her stage presence.”
Simmons rolled out No Genre six months ago, bringing to fruition a project he had been incubating for years.
“I’m on my fourth album now. I have enough experience now to know how to develop an artist, what an artist needs to be there,” he said. “Nobody really has it all figured out, nobody knows all the answers, but (the goal) is to help give really talented artists opportunities. I find pleasure in doing that.”
Simmons views No Genre and the genre-bending music of its artists through the prism of the abstract, where you “turn your head sideways, and then you turn your head to the other side to look at it again, then you turn your head again to look at it. You just can’t really describe it.“
“It’s so different but yet it’s simple,” he added.
Woloshin, whose style meanders from R&B to punk rock to high-energy Americana and pop, was a perfect fit for Simmons’ mission, he said.
“She can do anything. Hell, she could even rap if she wanted to,” he said. “She actually played me a rap song and I was like ‘Alright Tora, let’s do it.’”
A few months after “X-Factor,” Woloshin moved to Florida to pursue a development deal with an indie label. The move didn’t produce the career launch that she had anticipated, so she moved home.
The record deal with No Genre, she said, will put her back on the track to realize her musical aspirations, which she has been nurturing since she was a child growing up in Tucson.
“I think this is the beginning of the rest of my life,” she said.
Woloshin said she is spending some of her downtime on the tour bus working on a song that she will submit to the Team Up With Timbaland song contest. She is one of five finalists vying for a shot to record with the award-winning producer and artist.
Simmons said he also is recording with the artists on his bus, where he has set up a recording studio. No Genre will release a single soon that involves several of the artists. Simmons wouldn’t say which ones, beyond that Woloshin is among them.
