Tanya Tucker
starring Tanya Tucker and Terri Gibbs
Tanya Tucker made it as a star at 14, and her Country Music career has been classic – a string of hits, a string of boyfriends, and a rehab or two. And we all know you can’t sing country without that industrial grade level of pain. This rather sparse DVD features Ms. Tucker performing to a packed house at Orlando’s Cheyenne Saloon, which filmed a number of televised country acts in the 90’s. There’s no date to be found anywhere on this disk, but I’ll hazard that it comes from about 1998.
Ms. Tucker does not look particularly country here, but wears a provocative dress and we get a good look at her underwear as she bounces around stage backed with a competent, if rock-oriented, back up band. Stylistically, this is right in the center of the country/rock crossover, and her big hits “Delta Dawn” and “What’s Your Mama’s Name” can please both sides of that ever diminishing fence. Even the downbeat ballad “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” has a feel-good flair to it, perhaps enhanced by the distinctly new south audience.
The concert is about the right length – 45 minutes of a sexy but fading Tanya feels good, but much longer and we’d be heading out to the bar at Apple Annie’s. The disk wraps up with four songs by a very earnest looking Terri Gibbs. While Ms. Gibbs has her own style and following, she looks and sounds like a preachy Randy Newman and really clashes with the flirty Tanya.
The disk has minimal extra features – a static biography and discography, no credits and a lame country music quiz bases on who won what CMT award in what year. One of the highlights is a short sample of other disks from Quantum Leap, including a lesson on watercolor painting and a travel Spanish lesson, “Donde esta El Hotel…”
This is worthwhile if you really like Tanya, or if you have fond memories of Church Street Station in its glory days. And she does have nice undies.
