T
ANYA TUCKER WALKS
into a bar — or “my
office,” as she calls it.
The 60-year-old singer, who
shot to fame with the gospel
stomper “Delta Dawn” in 1972
at age 13, is unmistakable with
a neon-pink hairdo as she holds
court for the next two hours
at one of her favorite spots in
Nashville. She reflects on every-
thing from the time Elvis tried
to kiss her (“My father said, ‘He
can have any girl he wants, but
he can’t have you’ ”) to current
country phenomenon Mason
Ramsey (“He’s a yodeler? Bet-
ter have another gig too”). The
conversation
is interrupted
after Tucker
finishes her
second dirty
martini and
spies Miranda
Lambert
leaving. Tucker
hustles out to
pitch her a song
written by her
oldest daughter, Presley.
Tucker is feeling extra-moti-
vated to score a hit lately, now
that she’s back in the music
game. She just completed While
I’m Livin’, her first album in
10 years, produced by Brandi
Carlile and Shooter Jennings,
which sets Tucker’s tough
country tenor against spare
Americana arrangements.
Carlile hopes it revives her
legacy: “She hasn’t been given
the respect she deserves,” says
Carlile. “As she fell on hard
times, I don’t think she was
given the same grace an artist
like Waylon and Willie and
Cash were given for the times
that they didn’t live up to their
own standards. She should be
lauded the same way so many
of these amazing
w men are.”
Tucker has been known as a
hell-raiser for most of her life.
She became a teen star with the
support of her dad-manager,
Beau, scoring 13 Top 10 country
hits in the 1970s. But by age 22,
Tucker was a tabloid fixture
for dating Glen Campbell, who
was twice her age. “If we’d met
later, when I realized what kind
of love we had, we’d probably
have died together,” she says.
She got hooked on cocaine, and
entered rehab in 1988.
After 2009, Tucker stopped
releasing music, instead travel-
ing the country with her daugh-
ter, Layla. “For a while there it
felt like no one gave a damn,”
Tucker says. She was initially
reluctant to record again, even
after Carlile approached herwith songs she had written with
her bandmates, with a plan to
produce alongside Jennings.
Just days before sessions were
to begin in L.A., Tucker pulled
out of the project. “I said,
‘Shooter, I don’t think these
songs are right for me.’ ” But he
talked her into it, and soon she
was belting heartbreaking tunes
like “Bring My Flowers Now,”
where Tucker says she wished
she was a better daughter to
her mother, who died in 2012:
“Bring my flowers now, while
I’m livin’,” she sings.
Tucker is hesitant to describe
While I’m Livin’ as a comeback.
“My least-favorite word,” she
says. But she can’t help but get
sentimental when presented
with her first RS cover, from
1974, with the cover line “I’m
Tanya Tucker, I’m 15, You’re
Gonna Hear From Me.” “It
should be, ‘Forty years later,
I’m Tanya Tucker,’ ” she says,
“ ‘and you’re still hearing from
my ass.’ ”After some serious
battles, the outlaw
returns for a soulful
comeback LP
By JOSEPH HUDAK
Tanya Tucker: Return
of a Country Hell-Raiser
PROFILE
“She should be lauded
the same way so many
of these outlaw men
are,” says Brandi Carlile.DANNY CLINCHThe Mix