Tillis, Morgan make fast friends

Country star Pam Tillis admits to having a special affinity for the Memphis area.

There are many reasons: The city gave her one of her first and biggest hits in 1991’s “Maybe It Was Memphis.” She once dated a Collierville resident. And her most recent standalone single, “Two Kings,” about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Elvis Presley, was co-written with former Memphian Brenda Berger O’brien, featured co-lead vocals by Bluff City up-and- comer Kris Thomas and The Stax Music Academy’s Street Corner Harmonies choir on the chorus, and has an accompanying video largely shot on Beale Street.

“I’ve just kind of got a connection to Memphis,” says the 54-year- old Grammy winner, unable to explain what exactly keeps her coming back to the area in song and in person. “Memphis has been very, very good to me.”

Less than two months after her last appearance in the region, a sold- out solo show at the Bartlett Performing Arts & Conference Center, Tillis is back again, this time in Tunica at the Gold Strike Casino’s Millennium Theater. She’s bringing a little bit of Nashville via her co-headliner, Grand Ole Opry member Lorrie Morgan.

Tillis and Morgan both grew up in Nashville as members of country music royalty. Tillis’ father was stuttering ’70s hit-maker Mel Tillis, while Morgan, who made her Opry debut at the age of 13, is the daughter of the late Country Music Hall of Famer George Morgan. But despite having so much in common, the two never met as kids.

“I knew of her,” says Tillis, who is two years older than Morgan. “We went to different high schools, and we were on a little bit different path. But I knew who she was and had heard she was pursuing music. The children of country music artists all knew who each other were even if we didn’t know each other.”

Years later, after Tillis had started her own career with hit albums such as and

she was still doing occasional session work when producer Richard Landis called her to lay down backing vocals on Morgan’s 1994 release, a session for which Morgan was not even there.

“I’d sung with her before I even met her,” Tillis recalls. “Now we’re thick as thieves.”

Tillis and Morgan first met and teamed up on stage on 1996’s “Country Gals Only.” It took almost 14 years for them to reunite, playing their first shows together in late 2009 at the suggestion of promoters.

Now on their “Grits & Glamour” tour, Tillis says she and Morgan have been able to forge a bond they never could have had when they first met, a bond reflected in the show when the two stars swap songs back and forth.

“The first tour we didn’t travel together, and we both had a bazillion other commitments, and that time of our careers was really high pressure,” she recalls. “This time has been so much more relaxed, and we’re traveling together. ... We’ve really had a lot of time to get to know each other and become friends.”

That friendship has led to the two collaborating on a new CD that Tillis says should come out around the end of summer.

About the same time, Tillis, whose last solo album was 2007’s hopes to release her first record with the Pam Tillis Trio, her band with fiddler Megan Lynch and multi-instrumentalist Mary Sue Englund that has been her main creative focus in recent years.

“The last two or three years, I’ve been really wanting to get back into the songwriting thing because I kind of let it go,” Tillis says. “I’m continuing to sow seeds physically and musically. Both figuratively and literally, I’m still planting.”

Courtesy Pam Tillis