This story about Brandi Carlile and Tanya Tucker first appeared in the Race Begins issue of awards magazine TheWrap.
It started with a conversation about death. After the making of “The Return of Tanya Tucker—Featuring Brandi Carlile,” the Oscar-eligible documentary chronicling the return of country firebrand Tucker with an album co-produced and largely written by Carlile, the two women were having a leisurely dinner at Nashville when the conversation turned to the people they had lost during COVID.
“We had lost John Prine, and she lost Billy Joe Shaver, who was a real friend of hers,” Carlile told TheWrap. “I said, ‘Tanya, I’m so sorry about Billy Joe’s passing,’ and she said, ‘Oh, I’m the youngest of all those guys. I’m going to have to see them all get their wings before I do. I guess I’m ready. And then she looked at me and said, ‘Ready as I’ll never be.’
By this point, Carlile had experience using moments in Tucker’s stormy life to write songs for her, culminating in “Bring My Flowers Now,” which won the 2020 Grammy for Best Country Song.
“I went home and went into the inventory of Tanya’s memories that she shares so freely,” Carlile said. “She tells me these stories and I remember them as if they were my own. I wrote her story in verse and tried to empathize with what is happening and what will continue to happen in her time here.”
Tucker added: “I love that line, ‘Every time I kiss a weathered cheek.’ Because I think of Ernest Tubb and I remember kissing him right after he let me sing on his show in Wilcox, Arizona when I was 9 years old. I went to his cheek, and it was so worn and soft.”
Of course, the song also has lines that sound like Carlile: “I always was and always will be looking up,” for example, recall not just the look we see in the movie when Tucker utters a gut-wrenching voice and Carlile looks on in undisguised amazement. , but also the similar look in viral videos of recent Newport Folk Festival performances of a fragile but timeless Joni Mitchell, another comeback Carlile helped engineer.
“I have to feel it myself,” Carlile said. “Otherwise I couldn’t have written it. I haven’t had many of these hard goodbyes yet, but I’d be lying if I said I don’t lose sleep sometimes.” Recording “Ready As I’ll Never Be,” Tucker said, was difficult. “I just didn’t get it,” he said. “So I went out to the garage and started practicing. I needed to give him a few more hits, because he hadn’t gotten it.” she laughed. “Brandi thought she had me gone and gone to bed, but she needed to do it my way.”
Read more of the Race Begins issue here.
