Pam Tillis - Looking for a Feeling (2020)

Grammy-winning country artist Pam Tillis is making her return with the new album Looking for a Feeling, due out April 24th via her own Stellar Cat Records. As a preview of the upcoming project, the “Maybe It Was Memphis” singer has issued the smoky title track, a bit of Muscle Shoals-style country-soul in the key of Bobbie Gentry.

“Sister’s on a sidewalk listening to the devil’s lies/Brother’s on a mountaintop trying to get wise,” she begins, rattling off a cast of characters who are all looking for something more — or at least something different. “Who can point a finger, who can say what’s wrong? We all get high or low, turning over every stone,” she concludes. Driven by percussive acoustic guitar strums and a funky drum pattern, the production provides Tillis with enough space for an expressive vocal performance that ranges from a Dylanesque tumble of words to the gritty gospel soul of Mavis Staples.

“’Looking for a Feeling’ is a song I excavated with Waylon Payne one dreary February day,” says Tillis. “It’s a non-judgmental look at a cast of spiritually adrift characters just trying to get right. Those characters, that searching — I see parts of myself in all of them.”

Tillis’ 11th studio album, Looking for a Feeling follows 2012’s independently released Recollections, which featured updated versions of hits including “Let that Pony Run” and “Mi Vida Loca.” Most recently, Tillis joined up with fellow Nineties star Lorrie Morgan for a pair of collaborative albums, 2013’s Dos Divas and 2017’s Come See Me and Come Lonely.