Next Women Of Country Hit The Big Apple With Tanya Tucker, Brandy Clark, Aubrie Sellers (Live Review)

Tanya Tucker established herself as one of country music’s great badass women before she was even old enough to drive. After being coaxed out of a semi-retirement by longtime admirer Brandi Carlile last year, she reclaimed that mantle and ran with it, winning the first Grammy Awards of her 40-plus year career. 

That momentum prompted CMT to tap the Texas native as the linchpin of its Next Women of Country tour, which, not coincidentally, launched as the network made a pledge to pursue gender equality in its programming via a 50-50 airtime split.  The tour, which will feature a rotating cast of opening acts on its itinerary, made a stop in the Big Apple on Friday night with Aubrie Sellers and Brandy Clark setting the stage for the country icon.

Both of those “next women” exuded a spitfire intensity that showed they belong on the same stage with Tucker. Aubrie Sellers, the daughter of chart mainstay Lee Ann Womack, kicked off the evening with a seething set of what she calls “garage country.”  Roughly strumming an acoustic guitar and backed by a sole electric guitarist, she wound her way through a short set of songs (largely drawn from her new Far From Home album) that conjured up images of P.J. Harvey relocated to Nashville’s darker precincts.

Brandy Clark, who’s already earned a good deal of acclaim for her first two albums, pumped up the volume with her honky-tonk ready band. The Washington State native drew heavily from her upcoming  Your Life Is a Record album, unspooling tales that prove she’s mastered the old-school story song (represented by the wistful “Pawn Shop”) as well as the sassy kiss-off (“Long Walk,” which crammed a litany of zingers into its three-minute duration).  Clark cut her teeth as a songwriter – she won a CMA Song of the Year award for co-writing Kacey Musgraves’ “Follow Your Arrow,” a song that charts her own life story pretty well – but she’s clearly cut out for the spotlight.

As the evening progressed, the 61-year-old singer shed some of those layers of armor (along with her embroidered jacket and cowboy hat) and in the process, she unleashed the grit and intensity that’s always lurking just beneath the surface of her vocal delivery.  A one-two punch of  the steel guitar- led “Blood Red and Goin’ Down” and the tear-in-your-beer “Ridin’ Out the Heartache” made it clear that there was clear – but not necessarily smooth – sailing ahead.

The voyage got really interesting around mid-set, when Tucker remembered that she’d outfitted the drum riser with some refreshments – in the form of the Cosa Salvaje tequila she recently introduced. She knocked back a shot, then poured a second, before handing out samples to audience members closest to Town Hall’s stage.  Thus fortified, she ramped up the energy, strutting the stage with a casual cockiness during high-octane versions of “Texas When I Die” and “Hard Luck.”

She was generous-but-judicious in use of material from the Grammy-winning While I’m Livin’, co-produced and largely co-written by Brandi Carlile, and that album’s most intimate songs proved to be some of the evening’s most gripping. Tucker tugged plenty of heartstrings with a measured, plaintive renditions of “Bring My Flowers Now” (which won this year’s Best Country Song Grammy) and “High Ridin’ Heroes” (offered up in stripped-down form).

Tucker has made no secret of the fact that she was reluctant to launch this comeback – something she alluded to several times over the course of this set. But by the time she led the crowd through a cathartic, set-ending singalong through “Delta Dawn,” she was clearly relishing the spotlight – and greeted the final notes with an arms-outstretched stance that was part “thank you” and part “I told you so,” both of which were entirely fitting.