Editor's Note: Tami Neilson is No Depression's Spotlight Artist for July 2025. Learn more about her new album, Neon Cowgirl, which was released July 11 via Outside Music in this feature, exclusive video of her song 'Salvation Mountain', and exclusive essay from her.
A few weeks ago, as singer/songwriter Tami Neilson drove through Branson, Missouri on her run with the Outlaw Country Music Festival, she flashed back some 30 years to her childhood. Passing billboards for the Branson Belle showboat dinner cruise reminded her of how she and her family band would have graced those billboards all those years ago.
Though Neilson grew up touring in a family gospel band, she never dared dream she’d get this far. A few miles away from the 800-person riverboat theater she’d known so well, she took stage at the massive Thunder Ridge Nature Arena (in neighboring Riverdale) as part of a two-week run opening for Willie Nelson and Family and Bob Dylan on the 10th anniversary Outlaw Music Festival. Neilson ended the night standing on stage with Nelson, his family band, and many other tour performers, belting “I’ll Fly Away” — the same show closer she and her family had chosen decades ago on the Branson Belle.
“When you look at me as an artist, if you look at me on paper, it's absolutely ridiculous; it's nothing that the music industry would look at and go, ‘Oh yes, let's snatch her up.’ [I’m] a 48-year-old, plus size, mother of two that lives at the bottom of the world,” Neilson says. “For all of this to be happening now, I don't even have words for it. It's really fulfilling and satisfying to have that resilience and that tenacity even more than your talent.”
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