And then, the following baggage? “No, not yet, they are looking, I was promised it would be sent to my mother in Toronto within a week”, grimaces Tami Neilson while bursting into a laugh so powerful that the concrete of the airport must be all cracked up. Nothing is simple, huh, Tami? She smiled dangerously. The Zoom screen is in Cinerama when she bares her teeth. ” I’m here. My record company, Outside Music, does the impossible. We will present the outdoor shows. »
Let us add that the seventh wave of a virus which increasingly rhymes covid and everyday life forces him to cancel indoor shows. No chances to take. It’s still a shame for the Canadian-born, who lived through the entire pandemic sheltered in her adopted New Zealand. “It makes me even more resolute, let’s say. My new album is out [Kingmaker, paru vendredi], it’s time for me to go out too! »
The time of mourning
Each artist has their career history pending since March 2020, but there are, how to say … “more brutally interrupted coitus”, she summarizes, triggering an even more sonic laugh. ” I had Chickaboom! on fire, it was the album that was going to benefit from everything we had built with Do not be afraid and Sassafrass!, we had the momentum, I was going to conquer America! That said in a tone that thunders. “I may be exaggerating a bit, but let’s say there was a period of mourning. Mourning for the album, mourning for the sequel. A month before everything broke for me and my team, everything deflated… for everyone. »
No boom for the chicka. “The entertainment industry was the first to collapse and the last to rebound, and yet touring the world remains precarious. We stand on a dime. “For Tami Neilson, everything seems to be redone: of course it is enough to be exposed once to her, her voice, her songs, her temperament, this pace that she has, between Patsy Cline and the girls of the B- 52’s in their debut, to fall under his spell. Nevertheless, for the media and the programmers, the coast is to go up. At the FEQ on Saturday, she performs at 6 p.m., not as a headliner.
The time for findings
The album material kingmaker is particularly intense and immense, cinematic in the arrangements, more than ever direct in the subject. ” You can bet, most famous girl ain’t no-one heard of yet / But I’m all set “, she says in King of CountryMusica song-manifesto on the square that should come back to him: “ Could the King of Country music be the daughter not the son? It is her story that she tells. ” Nashville trailer park, I was 17 / Family band, Opryland, playing sets between writing songs / Slipping demo tapes in laundry bags of stars [you don’t get far] “.
“During the pandemic, she comments, career women disappeared, they were sent home to take care of the children because the schools were closed: it is always the women who pay the biggest price. Hence this need for affirmation increased tenfold in the songs born during confinement. ” I’ll stop begging for what’s already mine “, she decrees in kingmaker, the title track. In Ain’t My Jobshe takes Dolly Parton to witness: “ Just like Dolly said no to The King / You want half, make me laugh / Ain’t you heard me sing? »
The time of possibilities
She didn’t run out of fuel to get her lyrics and songs going. All the frustrations, once the mourning is over, are channeled into energy. These are all the fights of a life, all the desires retained, which needed to be expressed. ” Big boys, big noise / It’s my turn, you’re gonna learn / Keep walkin’, mama’s talking “, she intimates to the misogynists of the record and entertainment industry. “It’s the first album I’ve made on my own. I seized the opportunity head-on. »
And everything becomes possible, including singing a duet with Willie Nelson. “It is still a consequence of the pandemic. You can’t separate the good from the bad. Things happen, and it reveals our deep nature. We were scheduled at the same festival, everything is canceled, and the event is online. If the festival had taken place, we would not have crossed paths, each on his stage. He found himself a spectator, at home, and he saw my set, with her family. »
There’s disbelief in the crazy laughter that precedes the next sentence. “He became a fan! And his girlfriend too. We exchanged on social networks, she and I, for a year, and finally I dared to ask if he would listen to a song of mine that seemed appropriate to me, and it was done. » The voices of Tami and Willie come together naturally in Beyond the Stars. Song of dreams and hope. “It’s miraculous, isn’t it? ” Yes. He’s lucky, this Willie Nelson.
Tami Neilson will be performing as part of the Festival d’été de Québec, at the Place de l’Assemblée-Nationale, on July 16, 6 p.m.