Totally Tanya
 

By Teresa Mallam
Free Press
Mar 29 2006

Tanya Tucker rocked. It took decades, riding the waves of the country music world before she could do that – mix rock and country – but on Sunday night she had the CN Centre crowd eating out of her hand.
She packed more number one hits, more energy and pure showmanship into her on stage performance than seemed possible. Dressed in black and silver – with her trademark Nashville-style glitz and glamour – Tucker showed that after three decades, career ups and downs and some turbulent personal times, she can still win over new fans en masse.
Tucker belted out the songs that made her famous, songs like, What’s Your Mama’s Name, Would You Lay With Me, Two Sparrows in a Hurricane, The Jamestown Ferry, It’s a Little Too Late, Walking Shoes and Ridin’ Rainbows. She sang some new ones too backed by her amazing band of talented musicians, some of whom had been with her, she said, “a long, long time.”
But the award winning country music star kept them waiting, ending triumphantly with her first hit of the 1970’s. A great, gutsy, heart-felt version of Delta Dawn – the song she came out with when barely into her teens. In between songs, she wildly strummed a guitar made of air, strutted and boogied across the stage, taking time to charm the audience with jokes about her tabloid fodder lifestyle. She dedicated songs to her three children (who joined her onstage) showing a backdrop of home movies.
It was her legendary powerful and throaty voice, however – the one that rocketed her to stardom and topped the charts time and time again – that over 1,000 fans came out to hear on Sunday.
“Some of you go back with me a long ways,” she said, “And I want to thank you all for that.”
The evening was also a chance for Tucker’s 16-year-old daughter, Presley, to get a chance to sing – just one song – but the audience reacted with cheers and whistles for the upcoming country singer who, not surprisingly, has a voice like her mothers.