“I can remember having a conversation with Willie Nelson,” she says, casually.

(Who? “Yeah, he’s kind of an obscure musician I gave an opportunity to be on my album, just trying to share my platform,” and out comes that husky laugh again. To clarify: Nelson duets with her on her new album, in the song Beyond The Stars.)

“And I said to him, when he recorded the duet with me, ‘I don’t know if you can remember the feeling of when someone finally gave you a chance, that moment when you knew this would push you through to the next level, but I feel like you’ve given that to me’.

“He said ‘I remember it well’, and he knows exactly who it was and where it was: the woman who wrote Heartbreak Hotel [Mae Axton], and she was his ticket to Nashville. It doesn’t matter how many decades or how much success you’ve had, those things shape you right from the beginning and you carry that with you forever.”

Axton was yet another woman who was vital in the early days of country or rock or blues or pop but obscured or forgotten by male-centric history. They were, to borrow a phrase from the title of Neilson’s album, kingmakers.

“These women were, and have held up, the foundations of the Nashville music industry without being remembered for it,” Neilson says.

Loading

One thing those women were told, as so many have been, was not to show anger and not to demand because that would only put men off and they would get nowhere. But on Kingmaker, Neilson is not following that rule. One song, Ain’t My Job, has great screw-you energy. In another, she sings “I’ll stop begging for what’s already mine”.

“It’s a joyous ‘f--k you’,” Neilson says jovially.

One of the life lessons she sings about on the album is knowing what and what not to care about, and men’s delicate sensibilities – and those of white society generally as this Indigenous Canadian woman can attest – definitely falls into the latter category.

“That’s it in a nutshell. It’s coming into your power and your confidence,” she says. “Just by existing as a woman that’s unapologetic about what she has to say on the music she makes and not looking for approval, that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, still.”

Tami Neilson’s Kingmaker is out now.

A cultural guide to going out and loving your city. Sign up to our Culture Fix newsletter here.