She was told moving to NZ would be 'career suicide' - now there's no stopping country musician Tami Neilson

"I made this album for you while you were sleeping," Tami Neilson writes to her brother and lifelong musical collaborator Jay in the notes of her 14th album Neon Cowgirl.

Two months before Jay was put into an induced coma following a surgery that triggered a medical emergency, the siblings had been "hugging and jumping up and down and crying" in a New Orleans night club after Neilson received a personal invite to perform at the iconic Nashville venue the Grand Ole Opry - the dream of "every country artist from the time they are knee high to a grasshopper".

"[Jay and I] have been doing this since we were kids, you know. We were like 9, 10 years old when we started touring on the road full-time in a family band. After 30-plus years of tilling this dry-ass soil of the music business, there was a little sprout coming up, you know," she tells Music 101.

Although Neilson had supported Crowded House on Nashville's prestigious Ryman Auditiorium stage the year before, it was "just mind-blowing" to get a personal invite to play a star-studded Patsy Cline tribute concert in April 2024.

"I'm like, Are you sure they have the right Tammy? Like, do they know who I am, that I'm just this girl from New Zealand? I'm not, like, Tammy Wynette."

Two months after a medical emergency left her brother Jay with a "massive" brain injury, Neilson was crying on her couch and seriously considering cancelling her appearance at the Patsy Cline tribute when she got a FaceTime call from Wynonna Judd.

The American country star - who spent years in musical duo The Judds with her mother Naomi - is someone who well understands the complications of the "family band dynamic", Neilson says. When Judd asked, "Honey, how's your mental health right now?", Neilson burst into tears.

"I said, I don't want to trauma dump on you, you don't even know me. But I'm walking through something really, really hard at the moment… I said to her, 'I can't imagine walking on stage without Jay. He's been part of my journey my whole life'."

Judd told Neilson about getting up on stage at the 2022 CMT Music Awards the day after her mother's sudden death at 76 to accept a lifetime achievement award on her behalf.

"She said, 'No matter what swirls around you, you will be given the strength to walk through because this is, this is what you are here for’."

Before the Patsy Cline tribute show, Neilson flew to Toronto to see Jay, who was then out of the coma, and told him she didn't want to perform at it without him.

"He was like, 'Are you kidding me? I would have been so angry if you had pulled out because I couldn't be there'."

For a country music artist, playing the Ryman Auditorium is a "sacred experience," Neilson says.

"You suddenly feel like I am a small thread in this giant tapestry of the history of country music, and you truly are."

On the Neon Cowgirl track 'Borrow My Boots', she collaborates with the "brilliant and clever" American country songwriter Ashley McBryde, who she first met at the Patsy Cline tribute and who wore a customised Tami Neilson t-shirt to co-host the 2024 CMA Fest.

After jumping on Zoom together, Neilson says she and McBryde wrote the track - which is currently shooting up the US Americana music charts - in just one hour.

Neon Cowgirl's title track features Neil Finn, the musician who first invited Neilson on stage at The Ryman Auditorium to support Crowded House in 2023.

The week before she moved to New Zealand from Canada in 2007, Neilson and Jay saw Neil and Tim Finn perform their "sibling album" Everyone Is Here in Toronto.

"I remember sitting in that audience, holding my brother's hand and just sobbing because they're singing these songs as siblings, which I'd done my whole life with my brother, and I was moving away."

Before moving to Aotearoa - where she didn't know a soul except her husband Grant Tetzlaff - people told Neilson she was committing "career suicide".

After 20 years of slog, it was a 'full circle moment" when her "New Zealand musical family" helped her tick the biggest item - playing The Ryman - off her childhood bucket list.

This year, Neilson spent two weeks on Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan's Outlaw Tour, performing in a special dress designed by New Zealander Judy Martin with 'I heart Willie' on the front and 'and Bob' on the back.

Although none of the musicians on the Outlaw tour were allowed to interact with the "notoriously private and reclusive" Dylan, she says, at the very end of the tour, the 84-year-old music legend watched the Avett Brothers from side stage and the North Carolina folk band was later invited to do the same for his set.

"That was the day I joined the Avett Brothers, I was adopted into the family."

Supporting international stars and trying to "win over" their massive audiences in 30 to 45 minutes is very different to performing in Aotearoa, says Neilson, who'll play a run of shows around the country this October.

The New Zealanders who come to Tami Neilson shows are more than just fans, she says - they are her "community".

"You walk onto the stage and you feel like these waves of love."