Film is an award-winning documentary
Sony Pictures Classics has set The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile for a Blu-ray release on January 10th. The film, which made its premiere at SXSW in 2022, features Tucker’s first original music — “Ready As I’ll Never Be” — since the release of her 2019’s acclaimed, 2X Grammy-winning album, While I’m Livin’.
Trailblazing, hell-raising country music legend Tanya Tucker defied the standards of how a woman in country music was supposed to behave. Decades after Tucker slipped from the spotlight, rising Americana music star Brandi Carlile takes it upon herself to write an entire album for her hero based on Tanya’s extraordinary life, spurring the greatest comeback in country music history.
The film follows Tanya’s richly creative, utterly captivating, bumpy ride back to the top as Brandi encourages her to push past her fears to create a new sound and reach a new audience. The writing, the experimenting, and refining of this new music mixes with all that came before – using rare archival footage and photographs to delve into Tanya’s history, beginning in a single wide trailer in Seminole, Texas.
Taking stock of the past while remaining vitally alive in the present and keeping an eye on the future, The Return of Tanya Tucker is a rousing exploration of an unexpected friendship built on the joy of a perfectly timed creative collaboration. Kathlyn Horan directed the film that had a short theatrical run in November.
The film has been Certified Fresh by Rotten Tomatoes with a 92% approval rating. It was named recipient of the SXSW Audience Award, won for Best Editing at the Woodstock Film Festival and nominated for Best Music Documentary at the Critics Choice Documentary Awards and Cleveland International Film Festival. “Ready As I’ll Never Be” was also named Best Song from a documentary at the Hollywood Music in Media Awards.
