It's been just about six months since Jenny Tolman released her debut album, There Goes the Neighborhoodand the rising singer admits that her fans' responses to the music has exceeded her expectations.

"Oh my gosh. 'Whirlwind' has been the big word for me," Tolman reflected to The Boot at the 2019 SESAC Nashville Awards in November. "Really. I've just been touring all over the place ... I think we've counted up, like, 25 different cities that we've been to in the past month or two months, so it's just been quite the whirlwind."

The process of releasing There Goes the Neighborhood also redefined Tolman's idea of what's possible for an artist releasing music independently. "The album premiered on the Billboard charts at No. 25, which was just insane to me as an independent artist," she notes.

Most memorable, though, are the reactions she's gotten in person from her fans. For example, before a show she was set to play in Columbus, Ohio, a 7-year-old fan's mother tweeted her a video of the girl singing along to Tolman's song "So Pretty."

"I knew they were coming [to the show], so before I got to the venue, I sent her [mom] a private message on Twitter and said, 'Do you think she would want to get up onstage and sing this with me?'" Tolman recalls. "So towards the end of "So Pretty," before the last chorus, I called the little girl and she came up. She sang it solo and killed it, word for word and note for note. It was amazing. The crowd loved it, and she totally stole the show."

Even an exciting touring "whirlwind" can be a slog sometimes, though, especially with so much time spent away from home, but a special fan moment can make everything more than worthwhile.

"That's why we do all of this," Tolman adds.

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