Cinematic ambition - Tami Neilson

Tami Neilson has gone big screen cinematic with her chart-topping new album and the accompanying tour, she tells Tom McKinlay.

It’s the sound of Tami Neilson’s music exploding into technicolour, Weekend Mix music reviewer Cain Lindegreen says of the self-described "little rockabilly country singer’s" new album.

The woman herself gives a small shriek of approval as the opening line of Lindegreen’s review is read to her — and wants to see the rest of it.

Because he’s pretty much nailed Kingmaker.

"Approaching this album, the thread that I wanted, the continuity, was not so much a genre as I wanted it to feel cinematic," Neilson says from her home base in Auckland.

"I wanted the whole album to feel like a movie soundtrack. Some of my favourite albums are movie soundtracks."

There’s a little backstory here.

About a year ago, when she was working on the album, Neilson did a show featuring the music of a couple of director Quentin Tarantino’s movies, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs.

"And in doing that I connected with the music supervisor Karen Rachtman — she music supervised those soundtracks back in the day and kind of kicked off the popularity of how, back then, a music soundtrack could be just as successful as the movie itself."

That experience fed into Neilson’s long-held desire for her music to feel like it was accompanying a story.

"And when you are doing a soundtrack to a movie they are not all the same genre of music, you are wanting the big climatic moments, you are wanting the quiet moments, the tender moments, the sad moments, and so that is how I wanted this album to feel.

"I remember, specifically, standing in the kitchen making dinner, during one of our many lockdowns, and I had written most of the album but I thought ‘how am I going to open this album’. I remember starting to sing Kingmaker because I want it to feel like a title track when you sit down in a theatre and the lights go down and the screen comes up and the credits start rolling and you have that excitement and anticipation. That’s how I wanted people to feel when they started the album with Kingmaker."

The big production title track, the video for which features a supporting cast of Kiwi divas, certainly wouldn’t be out of place as a new 007 was unveiled, especially if she were a her.

A production on that scale feels more realistic for Neilson on the back of her current tour, which has already featured an outing with the 80-piece Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra. It will feature another orchestral backing band in a couple of weeks’ time, up in Christchurch with that city’s symphony players.

Neilson says she’s still buzzing from the big Auckland outing, but is also pretty fizzy about the prospect of her, relatively, more modest Dunedin show in a couple of weeks — which will feature a Chamber Music New Zealand string quartet alongside her own six-strong band.

"Ten people is still a lot of people on stage for me," she says.

"Normally I am a little rockabilly country singer, who normally has two or three musicians backing me. To have a string quartet is such a luxury. Having the string section, which we have on the album, it just elevates the whole songbook to another level."

And speaking of elevation and the new album, there’s also the little matter of Willie Nelson.

Nelson joins Neilson for a duet on the track Beyond the Stars, leaning in with that familiar fragile voice, softened further with age, singing as if from both sides of the veil.

He stopped while they were rehearsing the song, Neilson says, struck by a lyric: "I won’t let the breath leave my chest without taking you with me".

"That’s a good line," he said.

The approval was just one of many magic moments for Neilson while partnering with the storied singer-songwriter. She’s clear what his imprimatur means for her work.

"What it does is, it’s just the weight of his credibility, having him collaborate, it opens doors to people who wouldn’t normally give you the time of day or listen to your music," she says.

"It is lending his credibility to me and opening the door to his audiences to me."

When she was listening back to his vocal, she dried her eyes for long enough to contact Nelson’s wife, Annie.

"I said, ‘I don’t know if he can remember the person who finally gave him a chance and finally held a door open for him in his career and how that felt, but can you tell him that’s how I am feeling now’."

He remembered.

Neilson’s been doing some of that herself lately, appearing on soaring southern talent Jenny Mitchell’s new album, Tug of War, also out just last month, on the track Trouble Finds A Girl, giving her friend a little lift along the showbusiness highway.

"I feel strongly that sharing your platform to elevate other female artists is really important. The Topp Twins were one of the first to teach me that," she recalls.

"I landed in New Zealand and they were one of the very first acts to share their audience with me, and they had me as support on many tours. I remember the night I met them, it was an awards show and they got up and they were being rewarded for lifetime achievement or some amazing thing, and Jools was saying in her acceptance speech when you have any success in this industry and a door opens for you, make sure that you put your foot in that door and push it open wider for the people behind you to follow through."

While Neilson’s new album, Kingmaker — released last month to star-spangled rave reviews around the globe — roundly delivers on her cinematic ambitions, entertaining across the emotional spectrum from rousing to reflective, it does other work too, for those who care to listen more closely.

Continuing the work she and Mitchell did on Trouble Finds A Girl, and Neilson has been doing for years on stage and vinyl, Kingmaker calls out the patriarchy, speaks up for bodily autonomy, decries racism and generally challenges inequity in all its multifarious forms.

"Yeah, I mean you don’t often think about challenging misogyny and singing about inequality as a fun time, but I guess the reality is those things sit alongside inside of me," she says.

"People might see it as political, but it’s only political when its not your lived experience and for me as a woman in the music industry I am only singing about my life experiences, I am only telling stories from my life, so these challenges and hardships I have faced, and most women face in the music industry, they sit alongside our strength and our joy and our talent. One doesn’t overshadow the other, we are all of those things.

"At the end of the day I am a momma, I have two little boys, and I have never given them medicine without some honey, you know, give them some sugar. You have to give them some sugar."

In doing so, she takes a leaf from the great Mavis Staples’ handbook, who Neilson opened for in Auckland back in 2019.

"She marched with Dr Martin Luther King, she was an integral part of the Civil Rights Movement, she is in her 80s and continues to fight this fight she’s been marching for and singing about for eight decades and when I had the absolute honour of opening for her, the thing that struck me the most was she just radiates joy and generosity and love and she just is a ball of joy. And here she’s delivering very heavy messages and standing strong for equality and challenging racism. That’s exhausting work and I was so inspired. I thought, ‘she’s maintained her joy’, and that everything she sings is delivered with joy and love."

And Neilson knows fellow feminists also appreciate the love she spreads with her own music.

"I have had countless messages from women saying it makes them feel empowered and stronger, and thanking me for the messages in the songs."

On the other hand, if people don’t feel the love, that’s on them, Neilson reckons.

"Music is just a mirror ... it reflects what’s inside you back to you. Whether it is a song like Beyond the Stars with Willie and it makes people cry because they have grief inside them, they have lost a loved one, that’s music, it resonates with us, it reflects back to you what’s inside of you."

The few unfortunates who have chosen to troll her for her advocacy reveal themselves, she says.

"That’s unfortunately what’s inside of them. It is a mirror. And I hope that if something makes you feel uncomfortable or makes you feel defensive, maybe ask yourself why you feel uncomfortable to think about women being equal. That’s kind of the point of the message, to start conversations. Any change for the better starts with a lot of discomfort for the people who have benefited from the way things are or the ways things have been."

Fortunately, the verve of the music here is more than equal to the task of delivering such important words. Alongside the heartstrings of the Nelson duet, there are songs that Chrissie Hynde and Lucinda Williams would give eye teeth for.

Then there’s the unsettlingly soulful Green Peaches, evoking an influence Neilson’s happy to acknowledge.

"My inspiration sonically for this album is Bobbie Gentry. She is seen as having country roots and country flavours but her albums are pop, rock’n’roll, blues, country."

When asked, Neilson lands on "country soul" to categorise her own music, rolling Dusty Springfield and the Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood records into the mix of touchstones for Kingmaker.

"That’s cinematic cowgirl," she says with a laugh.

"They were my true north when it came to influences."

It sounds like there’s plenty more creative big-screen reimaginings in store, Neilson having usefully used her time in lockdown to throw off some shackles.

"Sonically, I’ve always been restricted by finance," she says.

"You know, having a string section is not something that’s cheap. But also, the funny thing I learned about myself during this time — you know, Covid giveth and Covid taketh away — was this realisation that I always restricted myself on my albums. I had this rule that if I couldn’t reproduce it live then I didn’t want it on the album because audiences would be disappointed. Which of course now I think is just ridiculous, but I didn’t realise how much I had adhered to those restrictions I had put on myself.

"Going in to write this album, create this album, I went in with the thought ... if I can’t travel the world I need to make an album that can travel the world for me. It just lifted those restrictions and the sky was the limit."

By Tom McKinlay