Pam Tillis 'Rhinestoned' album

Rhinestoned says it all. No other word, real or invented for the occasion, sums up as well where Pam Tillis stands now. She is, after all, a superstar as well as a survivor. A child of Music City royalty and a former rebel, she was determined to find her own way as a singer and songwriter — and she succeeded. A CMA Female Vocalist of the Year, she has written songs for some of the top singers in and beyond Nashville, including more than a few of her own hits.

She knows what it’s like to break the platinum barrier, to top the singles charts time and again, to bask in an ovation at her induction as a member of Opry or play in the intimate hush of the Bluebird Café. She has bathed in the lights of Broadway, posed for glamour magazine spreads, sung ballads in Bay Area bistros, batted wicked one-liners back to Tom Bergeron on Hollywood Squares, even made cameos in movies.

But no matter where she wandered, Pam Tillis never lost her connection to country music — even when country began to lose touch with itself. Trends came and went, and though she rolled easily with the tides and drew something from every new twist, she was aware that changes come with a cost, even as the business side of country flourished.

Her response was to insist on writing and cutting songs that spoke from the soul, rather than the boardrooms and focus groups, of the country music industry. The results have been records that emanate an almost painful beauty, as on her 2002 release, the critically acclaimed It’s All Relative (a tribute to her father, the great Mel Tillis).

“What I’m doing is country — but not necessarily the kind that you hear on the airwaves these days,” Tillis explains, one drizzly afternoon over coffee, not far from Music Row. “Now, I admire a lot of this music; after all, I’ve sung rock, pop, R&B, and jazz, so I’m hardly a purist. But what I’m hearing now sounds often more like pop than country to me. And I just seriously felt called by that old different drummer to something a little bit more like the country I remember from my formative years, the country music of my youth.” It’s also something Tillis’ fans and friends clamor for as she encounters them out on the road.

With It’s All Relative, which she affectionately calls ‘the Dad album,’ Tillis produced one of the most memorable discs to have come out of Nashville in years, largely because of her refusal to conform to expectations. Combing through her father’s catalog, she chose songs that had an especially timeless quality, with built-in resistance to the whims of the market. It was a bold statement; more than that, it set the stage for the even more assertive statement that Rhinestoned would make.

“Pam had reached a point where doing a record every year or two wasn’t as important as taking the time to make something that had more meaning,” says Matt Spicher, who co-produced Rhinestoned with Tillis and Gary Nicholson. “So she decided to embrace the momentum she had established with the Dad record.”

“That was the first record I ever made where I wasn’t concerned about having to come up with three singles,” Pam points out.

“The labels understood that from the beginning,” Matt says.

“They said they did,” she clarifies.

And that’s one reason why Rhinestoned marks the first album to be released on Stellar Cat, Pam’s own imprint. With total creative control, she let her heart lead the way toward material that she could perform honestly and emotionally. “This is an A&R-free zone,” she says, smiling. “But it is, first of all, real country. It’s a bookend to the Dad album, except it has all new songs. It’s like a bridge between the present and the past.”

How past is this particular past? “If you look at my record collection circa 1974,” Pam answers, “you’d see Emmylou, Graham Parsons, Waylon Jennings, Don Williams, Linda Ronstadt, and Neil Young. Flying Burrito Brothers — hippie country I call it — that was some of the best music that ever came out of this town. Maybe it wasn’t happening on country radio at the time but it sold record and built careers. It was the vibrant scene on the fringes of country, which was very cool — just as it is today.”

The Rhinestoned sessions started in 2004. Pam and Matt whittled 20 songs down to ten, which they cut and set aside, like bottles of wine allowed to mature. A few months later they repeated the process. And then, after reflecting for a while on what she had accomplished, Pam decided something wasn’t right. She talked about it with her trusted friend and writing partner Gary Nicholson and reached a critical decision.

“It needed to be more country ” she sums up. “I played what we had for Gary, brought him into the picture, and suddenly it felt like we weren’t wandering in the woods anymore The when I found the song “Band in the window”, suddenly I could see and hear the whole project in my mind right down to the t-shirts, Tillis’ laughs.

With that, the final round of recording began. All of it, aside from backing vocals, was cut the old-fashioned way: live, just the way those bands still play in the windows along Lower Broadway. Many of Pam’s performances were actually guide vocals, laid down in real time with the instrumental tracks but too strong in the end to throw away. Overdubs and fixes were kept to a bare minimum.

The rollicking reverence she brings to “Band in the Window,” the affection that radiates between her and John Anderson on “Life Sure Has Changed Us Around,” the goofball humor of “Crazy By Myself,” the insight of her recitation on “Bettin’ Money on Love”: All of the up-tempo moments on Rhinestoned emit a sense of freedom that’s impossible for Pam to suppress or for any listener to miss.

Even the ballads and deeper performances — the languorous sway of “Something Burning Out,” the wounded wisdom of “Train without a Whistle,” the almost whispered yearning of “Someone Somewhere Tonight,” and the recklessness of “Down by the Water” –— carry a quality that’s become sadly unfamiliar in much of today’s music.

It’s that feeling of delight that comes from singing exactly what you were meant to sing at that moment. It’s almost like a kind of ecstasy, which goes a long way when delivered by the incomparable Pam Tillis, without compromise or apology.

You might call it joy, but there’s a better word than that for this state of creative exhilaration.

We’d call it Rhinestoned.

EACH ONE A JEWEL: PAM TILLIS ON THE SONGS OF RHINESTONED

SOMETHING BURNING OUT (Leslie Satcher): Leslie is one of my favorite writers in Nashville. It starts out cool and earthy, kind of mysterious – and then you’ve got that classic country chorus. I hear a bit of Marty Robbins a bit of Roy Orbison, that’s why I’m drawn to Leslie’s songs. We share a lot of the same influences.

BAND IN THE WINDOW (Lisa Brokop/Kim Patton Johnston): Finding this song really helped bring the concept of the album into focus. It summed up so much of what I love about Nashville: the romance of this city, the wildness, the crazy dreamers. I played a lot of those little bars and been in those bands in the window.

TRAIN WITHOUT A WHISTLE (Jon Randall/Jim McBride): The soulful, R&B feel of the melody is what I love about this song. Who knows why really sad songs make people feel better? But we put this in the show before we recorded and people just really responded to it. Its another one of my big sister advice songs, in the vein of Spilled Perfume and let that pony run. It’s nothing heavy or complicated, just two verses and a chorus. But sometimes that’s all you need

LIFE SURE HAS CHANGED US AROUND (Pam Tillis/Gary Nicholson/Tom Hambridge): As a writer, I keep my ears open, my song writers antennae up so to speak, and one day I just heard somebody say “life sure has changed us around.” It was a little awkward sounding not quite right but I knew exactly what he meant when he said it . I went over to the infamous Chicken Shack to write told Gary that idea and that song just came tumbling out And I was so happy to have John Anderson join me on this one; he’s an American classic, sort of like blue jeans.

SOMEONE SOMEWHERE TONIGHT (Walt Wilkins/Davis Raines): I’ve had this song in my back pocket for a long time. It was one of the best songs I’ve ever heard, but no one would let me record it, A and R departments tend to shy away from 5 minute songs. Now that I’ve got the opportunity, it’s one of the first things that went onto the album. It’s about what’s most tragic and most beautiful in life. This song is a masterpiece

DOWN BY THE WATER (Jim Armenti): I know that people are downloading single tracks, but I’m still of the generation that looks at an album as a piece of work. This song, to me, is a vital piece of Rhinestoned. When you’re trying to be commercial, you don’t always have the freedom to go with a song that maybe isn’t seen as a potential single. But “Down by the Water” has a sound that I don’t always hear these days – that seventies country/folk sound that was such an influence to me. It sounds like the musical Love Child of the Texas Tornados and the Dixie Chicks...

CRAZY BY MYSELF (Matraca Berg): This is the bluesiest thing, and maybe the least country thing, on the record. But I love that funky acoustic blues guitar. I’m a big fan of Matraca Berg. And I can relate to the idea of being slightly dysfunctional [laughs].

BETTIN’ MONEY ON LOVE (Verlon Thompson/Doug Crider): I jokingly say that this is the one song on the album that my dad couldn’t do [laughs]. He couldn’t do a recitation. To be honest, it was a challenge to get the emotion through speaking - I know exactly how to get through singing but I had to be more of an actress than a singer on this one, Fortunately, though, I relate so much to the woman in the song that it kind of just flowed. This song is a mini-movie all you need is popcorn....

THAT WAS A HEARTACHE (Leslie Satcher/Bruce Robison): This song reminds me of my favorite old grooves from Don Williams and Vern Gosdin. I just love the lope of this rhythm. I didn’t write this one, but it is so autobiographical: That second verse, where it goes “twenty years old, running wild, moved out on my own,” Straight out of my dairy

THE HARD WAY (Pam Tillis/Mel Tillis Jr.): Again, there’s a finger pickin rhythym that you don’t hear much on the radio anymore. I was thinking of “Gentle on My Mind,” , My brother and I wrote this together.We think like twins so he’s one of my favorite writing partners.

OVER MY HEAD (Andrew Gold/Jenny L. Yates): Some of the songs on Rhinestoned come from the bluer side of country, but “Hard Way” and “Over My Head” both have silver linings, I’s that idea of redemption in the end. That brings the album to a close on an upbeat, spiritual note, That kind of happened by accident and I liked it the more I thought about it. There’s even a baby’s coo on the end of that song, the most beautiful, purest sound I can think of.

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Pam Tillis - Rhinestoned