All Over the Map

A busy year sends Pam Tillis around the world

Pam Tillis could be the most secure woman in country music. How else could she shift so comfortably between working with her ex-husband on her new single, performing on Broadway, then playing in Branson?

"I'm not good at conforming," shrugs Pam, curled up in a chair at her Nashville record label.

Pam asked her ex-husband, songwriter Bob DiPiero, to produce her new single, "After a Kiss." The song is on the soundtrack of a new movie called Happy, Texas.

"Oh, there was a clause in the divorce that I had to do some records with him," deadpans Pam about working with ex-husband DiPiero, to whom she'd been married for seven years until divorcing in 1998. Then she breaks into a smile. "No, he's great.

"The first song that I contemplated doing for this film was a song he had written, but it didn't quite fit. But I loved working with him so much that I said, 'Why don't you help me on this song?' So he said, 'It'd be neat to be involved with something I didn't write, because then I'll have a totally objective perspective on it.' "

Obviously there was no friction between the former spouses, who split last year. And Pam notes that her working relationship with DiPiero is certainly not without precedent.

"It's nothing new," she says. "George and Tammy kept working, and [playwright] Neil Simon and [actress] Marsha Mason did too. The whole thing with working with a producer is that you have to trust him. And if he can't tell me, 'Hey, that was awful -- please try it again,' then no one can!"

In Pam's hands, the song -- which describes a couple fighting and making up -- takes the listener from a dreamy whisper to a soulful holler.

"On different levels, it fits me. The song is nice and conversational." She recites the lyric:

I'm gonna walk out that door,
walk right back in
Straight to your arms
and start all over again
'Cause you and I know
that our love's bigger than this
Let's talk about it after a kiss.

"It's not clever. I hate clever!" she laughs. "It's just different.

"After being on the radio for a decade you really have to start thinking about things like 'What can I capture in my voice that I haven't ever captured on tape?' and 'How can I top myself?' "

By trying new things, for starters. This last year took Pam to the far corners of the entertainment business. A year after releasing her Every Time album, she went to New York to perform on Broadway in the musical Smokey Joe's Cafe: The Songs of Leiber and Stoller. "It was unbelievable," she says. "It just fell in my lap, like a dream come true."

The Great White Way did give her a case of butterflies, though. "I was tore up," she admits. "I forced myself to not focus on the differences with country music. I'd tell myself, 'OK, you've done this before,' even though part of your mind is going, 'What am I doing here? I can't do this!' "

Still, she persevered and melted the hearts of her tough Big Apple audiences. "If you listened to your inner critics all the time," she says, "you'd just stay in bed."

She also became a semi-regular in Branson, Mo., performing with her father, the legendary Mel Tillis. "The whole thing about Branson is that people don't understand it here in Nashville. But it's a part of my family and my life, so I did about 80 shows over a 10-week period. It was the right thing for me to do."

Her latest adventure took her on a tour of Australia. "I love it over there! They know everything," she says of her Aussie fans. "It's hard to believe they're so aware of our music, and we don't know anything about theirs."

For now, Pam has stopped globetrotting long enough to begin planning her next album, which she will again co-produce.

One thing's for sure -- she'll be trying something new. "If you don't keep it fresh for yourself, you're just going to hate it," says Pam. "If you get jaded and bored it's going to come out in the music.

"You know that other national pastime other than baseball, the stock market? I've been studying that a bit this year, and they always go, 'You've got to diversify.' The key to survival is adaptability. I just want to be adaptable. I want to be imaginative and think outside of the box -- there's a good cliché for you! So I'm just trying to do a lot of different things and have fun with it.

"It's been a fun year. So I'm in a good place."

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