Tanya Tucker—My Turn—Saguaro Road—2009
Tanya Tucker has been in the country music game so long, it’s hard to believe that she just turned 50 last year. Of course when you hit the scene at age 13, you’re in for a long career that guarantees some ups and downs. It’s interesting to look back on Tanya’s arc and see that she had the whole pop starlet drama down decades before the Britney era. What kind of song title is “Blood Red and Goin’ Down” for a 14-year-old anyway? She went from “Delta Dawn” sweetheart to pop-rock strumpet to Toxic Tanya, throwing furniture at Glen Campbell, at a pace that seemed destined for flame-out. However, she not only survived but went on to consistent success in the ’80s and hung in there when the supermodels took over country in the ’90s. Only in the ’00s did she take her boot off the gas, but it’s been radio silence for most of the decade.
Well, My Turn, billed as her comeback album, has Tucker sticking her toe back into the waters with an all-covers album produced by Dwight Yoakam cohort, Pete Anderson. The good news is that the record sounds great—crisp and clean—and Tucker sounds fully engaging with a voice full of sinew. She always sang with a barbed edge, and at times on My Turn, she sings with a cigarettes-and-valium tone that sounds nearly strained, which she makes work for the most part. She’s not given the opportunity to truly bust loose here, however, as everything on this record is safe and Branson-approved.
And that’s the chief problem—Tucker sings nothing but age-old country standards this time, which ultimately feels unnecessary. The hook is that all of these songs are identified with male singers and Tucker is making them her own by changing their perspective, hence the title. But the arrangements are straightforward and commonplace, which makes you wonder if we really need an umpteenth version of “Crazy Arms” or “Oh, Lonesome Me.” They’re beloved songs, but that’s the point—definitive versions and inspired covers already exist in droves, and with your hard-drive already packed with albums that you don’t have time to listen to, I have to wonder how many spins such an exercise in redundancy merits.
Not that My Turn doesn’t have its moments, and it certainly should please Tucker die-hards. The best songs are her duet with Jim Lauderdale, doing a killer Don Rich, on “Love’s Gonna Live Here,” and with Jo-El Sonnier on a fun version of “Big, Big Love.” Best track: Merle Haggard’s “Ramblin’ Fever,” which closes the album and has just enough ’70s Busch-beer mojo to make Tucker’s rough-and-ready take on the song feel genuine.
No need to knock Tanya; she’s a legend still worth listening to. I mean, if Vince Gill is in the Country Music Hall of Fame, why isn’t T-Tuck? And perhaps a covers album could do the trick as a true comeback—but Johnny Cash’s American Recordings or Joan Baez’s Day After Tomorrow would serve as far better models, records that tap contemporary writers and allow those legends to dig into fresh interpretations on edgier songs that haven’t already been done to death. It doesn’t have to be Tanya Sings Radiohead, but Tucker sounds fiery enough on My Turn to prove that she deserves a more inspired return to the scene.
