The Return of Tanya Tucker

Comebacks don’t come more decisive or delightful than the one chronicled in The Return of Tanya Tucker Featuring Brandi Carlile. Despite the film’s rather clunky title, director Kathlyn Horan delivers its story breezily and with a clear eye for both her subjects’ complicated emotions.

As the film begins, we learn that singer-songwriter Carlile, 41, is a huge fan of Tucker, 64. But she feels strongly that the country music establishment has failed to adequately celebrate her despite her successes, many chalked up when Tucker was still a kid. Along with producer Shooter Jennings, Carlile lures Tucker out of semi-obscurity with the promise of making a new album, her first in a fallow decade.

From the start, it’s clear Tucker is at once intrigued and skeptical of the project, doubting her own abilities as much those of the much-younger team assembled around her. As the trio of Tucker, Carlile, and Jennings slowly begin establishing a rapport in the studio — frequently with Carlile in the recording booth coaching Tucker as Jennings conducts from the mixing board — walls begin to crumble, and memories emerge. 

Carlile draws out those stories by pulling snippets of lyrics from Tucker, which she then weaves into fully realized songs reflecting the older singer’s variously tumultuous and triumphant experiences while mapping her many regrets. A parallel narrative soon takes shape, following Tucker back in time to Texas where she was born and Arizona, where she was raised as her mother and father recognize and nurture her budding vocal talent. 

One of the most interesting aspects of the story is how committed Tucker’s family was to developing her career, literally ripping up stakes and moving so she could better access advancement opportunities. Tucker’s father Beau was a particularly towering figure, successfully managing his daughter throughout her roller-coaster career. His death profoundly impacted her will to carry on.

In this second narrative thread, the Return of Tanya Tucker Featuring Brandi Carlile follows a fairly straightforward documentary path though it remains startling to remember that “Delta Dawn,” Tucker’s 1972 smash hit and signature song, soared up the charts and made her a household name when she was just 14. 

A crash of precisely the sort that eventually happened seemed all but inevitable. After giddy footage of Tucker’s initial rise, we enter her rocky middle period of drugs and partying with her much-older boyfriend Glen Campbell — a period brutally documented by the tabloids of the era — via archival TV footage, vintage interviews and the like, many contextualized by the older, wiser Tucker.

The film remains rooted in the present, though as Tucker, Carlile and Jennings meticulously work towards what will become Tucker’s 25th studio album, 2019’s While I'm Livin' which went on to score the Grammy Award for Best Country Album at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards, in addition to winning Best Country Song for “Bring My Flowers Now” which was also nominated for Best Country Solo Performance, and the all-genre Grammy Award for Song of the Year. 

A scene showing Tucker and her intimates listening as the Grammy nominations are announced is gold, as is Tucker and Carlile’s appearance at the podium of the awards show. Indeed, the film’s unflinching honesty is at times breathtaking; Tucker is chronically late, smokes to the point of compromising her voice and, much to Carlile’s chagrin, requests untenable changes to the finished album. The commendably serene Carlile’s growing exasperation — notably in the lead-up to essential rehearsals for a performance at Tucker’s pal, the late Loretta Lynn’s birthday party — is writ as large as her admiration for the vocalist.

But those contrasts give the film gravitas and depth. It scored the Audience Award in the 24 Beats Per Second program at SXSW 2022 and recently screened to acclaim at the Toronto International Film Festival. 

For fans of either Tucker or Carlile, it’s must-see. But even casual music fans will marvel at The Return of Tanya Tucker Featuring Brandi Carlile, which — in language Tucker would doubtless appreciate — shows definitively you can teach an old dog new tricks. And friends really are life’s most precious commodity. 

The Return of Tanya Tucker Featuring Brandi Carlile opens November 4, 2022 in Toronto (Scotiabank Theatre) and Vancouver (International Village), and in other cities throughout the fall/winter.