Tanya Tucker- Sweet Western Sound
Label: Fantasy
Producers: Brandi Carlile and Shooter Jennings
When country legend Tanya Tucker returned to the studio and joined forces with the tremendous tandem of artist-producers Brandi Carlile and Shooter Jennings to record her 2019 album, While I’m Livin’, it marked the resurrection of a long dormant recording career that even she herself may have written off at that point. But not only did Livin’ emerge as one of the Outlaw singer’s truly seminal projects, it ushered in a monumental renaissance that brought Tucker her first Grammy Award and overdue induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. It could have easily served as a glorious finale to an epic career that first began at the tender age of 13. Thankfully, it’s now proven to serve as the opening of a new chapter in the legacy era of her catalog, with the gorgeous Sweet Western Sound unveiling itself as a very worthy sequel. As on Livin’, Carlile and Jennings tenderly craft a vibrant and vintage C&W sound, lush with organic tapestry, chilling harmonies, and generous steel guitar to showcase the gritty magic that defines the raw, reedy tone of their subject’s latter day vocals. Tucker again proves herself masterfully aware of how to best utilize the soulful pathos that remains in her singular voice, as much as it may contrast with the sound it produced during her teens or her thirties. It’s that contrast which precisely makes this body of esteemed songs about both the wisdom and vulnerability required to age gracefully so damn powerful. The majority of the tracks come from some combination of the collective pens of Tucker, Jennings, Carlile and her comrades, Tim and Phil Hanseroth. Tucker gives each of them reverent and emotive treatment, from the humble pleading of lead single “Kindness”, to the trembling fear of time’s passage in “Ready As I’ll Never Be”, the wistful nostalgia of “Breakfast in Birmingham” (co-written between Carlile and Elton John’s legendary lyricist, Bernie Taupin) and “Waltz Across a Moment”, and the playful dismissal of past mistakes on “The List”. Additional album cornerstones arise with the bittersweet “Letter to Linda”, a personal ode to fellow legend Linda Ronstadt, and especially her heart-wrenching cover of one of Carlile’s own greatest moments and modern classic, “That Wasn’t Me”; it’s just as much a showstopper in Tucker’s hands as it was in Carlile’s. When Tucker closes the set with “When the Rodeo Is Over (Where Does the Cowboy Go)” (as well as the completion of a sweet and biting Billy Joe Shaver voicemail that also opened the set), it could be read as a contemplative swan song from an aging icon preparing to ride out of the spotlight for the last time. However, the sheer potency and beautiful vibrancy of yet another revivalist album more strongly suggests that Tucker’s own rodeo is far from completed, or so we can at least hope.
Track Listing:
- “Tanya” (Tanya Tucker, Billy Joe Shaver)
- “Kindness” (Tim Hanesroth, Phil Hanseroth)
- “Breakfast in Birmingham” featuring Brandi Carlile (Brandi Carlile, Bernie Taupin)
- “Waltz Across a Moment” (Shooter Jennings)
- “Ready As I’ll Never Be” (Tucker, Carlile)
- “The List” (Tucker, Carlile)
- “Letter to Linda” (Tucker, Jennings)
- “City of Gold” (JT Nero)
- “That’s Wasn’t Me” (Carlile, Hanseroth, Hanseroth)
- “When the Rodeo Is Over (Where Does the Cowboy Go?) (Craig Dillingham, Billy Don Burns)
The 706 
Leave a comment