Songs in the key of life

Star JESSIE BUCKLEY guides us through the top tunes of this year’s Brit musical drama, Wild Rose

THERE ARE MANY THINGS Jessie Buckley could reasonably have expected to be doing this winter. Shooting a film, perhaps. Going on holiday, possibly. Sitting at home watching Wimbledon and the World Cup, for another.

Going on tour, not so much. Yet that’s exactly what Buckley is about to do when she rings Empire late one June afternoon. She’s fixing to head off on a mini-jaunt around Scotland and Ireland with her band, singing songs from Wild Rose, the film which confirms that Buckley is an astonishing, dynamite talent. “I’m so excited to be on a tour bus,” she laughs. “And so are all the band. We’ve got little bunk beds. It’s a nice way to round up a good old journey.”

It’s a journey that began when she signed on to Wild Rose, attracted by the lead role of Rose-Lynn Harlan, a Glaswegian single mother who, upon release from a brief stint in prison, eventually manages to turn her obsession with, and talent for, country music into the thing that might just turn her life around. Buckley has always been a singer she came second in the BBC’s Oliver!-themed talent show, I’d Do Anything, when she was 18 but has chosen to focus on acting of late, in the likes of Beast and Chernobyl But Wild Rose gives her the chance to show off her incredible voice across a series of songs. Including one written by Mary Steenburgen. Here, Buckley talks us through the pick of the bunch.

Country Girl

The film’s opening track, this cover version of the Primal Scream song sums up Rose-Lynn’s attitude towards life upon her early parole, as she focuses on music to the exception of her relationship with her mother (Julie Walters) and her children; the lyrics also dispensing some sound advice. “It’s a brilliant story,” says Buckley. “You go to a lot of different places in your head when you sing it, it’s about trying to clasp redemption while also sticking two fingers up to redemption and getting on with your life.” Which is a very Rose-Lynn Harlan thing to do. The film’s writer, Nicole Taylor, specified many of the songs in her screenplay, but Country Girl was a fairly late addition. “That wasn’t in the script at all,” says Buckley. “It was ‘Country Roads’ [the John Denver song], which would have been a very different feeling for the top of the film. I can’t imagine any other song for the beginning of the film now.”

Outlaw State Of Mind

Another fairly early song, this sees Rose-Lynn fresh out of prison and immediately determined to return to singing gatecrash a set at Glasgow’s Grand Ole Opry and, having kicked the contracted singer off stage, tear into a version of the Chris Stapleton hit. “It’s a song written for people who are tempted to be outlaws,” says Buckley. “It’s a dark song, it’s got depth and darkness and such attitude.” Unlike ‘Country Girl’, which was entirely pre-recorded, this was filmed live in front of a group of raucous extras. “That was so much fun,” recalls Buckley.

“I remember the first take, we were shooting handheld and nobody really knew what was going to happen.” What happened was that Buckley, not to put too fine a point on it, went for it. “Rose-Lynn, I blame her, because she set the room on fire,” she laughs. “After the take finished, the focus puller was just sweating. It just exploded. I was doing The Worm on the floor, jumping up and down on the stage, and nearly popping my shoulder out. It was so much fun. Then I had to do it 12 more times, just like that.”

I’M MOVING ON

Having taken a job as Sophie Okonedo’s (Susannah) cleaner, Rose-Lynn finds herself lost in a reverie whilst running a vacuum cleaner around the house. Headphones on, she starts belting out a raucous version of Hank Snow’s 1950s standard. In a little touch of magical realism, Harper studs members of the band around her as she shakes and vacs. “We actually went back and reshot that scene,” reveals Buckley. “I think it came to Tom [Harper, director] while we were filming, to have these band members be part of what’s happening inside her mind, and to pop up while she’s in her reverie.” Let the record show that Buckley actually was listening to herself, piped into the cans. “It was just great fun,” she says. “I just acted the maggot, really, for two full days of singing.”

Peace In This House

After Susannah (Okonedo) discovers that not only can Rose-Lynn sing, but she can sing, she urges her to record an audition video on the family computer. This opens doors that lead to a chat with the legendary Bob Harris in London, and a trip to Nashville, but for now this is the film’s most intimate moment. Just Buckley, singing Wynonna Judd’s soft country ballad, a cappella. “It’s probably the first time that Rose-Lynn has ever really done something like that, and exposed herself like that,” says Buckley. “As an actress, with all these songs it’s about what Rose-Lynn can’t say in her real life, but finds a way to focus on in what she sings. In my head, she was talking to her kids, and that’s the dream version of what life might look like for her.” Buckley has sung on stage, and in front of millions on TV, but this was a new experience for her. “It was a bit more scary and vulnerable, I suppose,” she admits. “And it’s scary for Rose-Lynn, to let herself be seen. She’s putting herself out there for the first time in that moment.”

Below: Rose-Lynn performs ‘Glasgow (No Place Like Home)’; About to be released from prison; Falling into friendship/ mentorship with employer Susannah (Sophie Okonedo).

WHEN I REACH THE PLACE I’M GOING

Another a cappella version now, in the film’s truly showstopping moment. On a trip to Nashville, ostensibly to try to get her foot in the door of the country music scene, Rose-Lynn joins a tour of the legendary Grand Ole Opry (slightly more roomy than the Glasgow version), drifts away from the main group, and discovers an empty stage. With an unguarded microphone. So, she sidles up to it and, tentatively at first, delivers a powerful rendition of Judd’s 1992 ballad. A rendition so powerful, in fact, that it entices some nearby band members to accompany her. It’s a pindrop needle-drop moment, and is perhaps lent extra poignancy by the fact that Buckley was actually performing the song on the genuine Grand Ole Opry stage. “You’re standing in the spot of ghosts,” says Buckley, who admits that country wasn’t her bag before she signed on. That’s changed somewhat. “Legends and myths have been made in that space, where Johnny Cash and Emmylou Harris and Towne Van Zandt, and these heroes of country and singing and storytelling have stood. It’s an amazing space. It feels like a church. The floors are filled with scars of things that have happened in the past.” Buckley interprets the song, which was specified in the script, as a “journeying song. There’s always a dusty road, or a character on a journey, looking for something.” And it’s here, at this moment, that Rose-Lynn finds that something. Which leads to…

GLASGOW (NO PLACE LIKE HOME)

The film’s denouement, which takes place a year after Rose-Lynn leaves Nashville post-haste, and heads home to get her life on the straight and narrow. Which leads her to Glasgow’s Grand Ole Opry, where she, happier, fulfilled, surrounded by her family, performs ‘Glasgow (No Place Like Home)’. In the film, it’s meant to be a Rose-Lynn original, but it was actually co-written by, of all people, Mary Steenburgen. Yes, that Mary Steenburgen. Who, it turns out, has become a prolific songwriter since 2007. “Before we started filming, they were looking for an original song,” says Buckley. “They sent out a brief, and Mary Steenburgen got that brief, but asked if she could read the script. And she and Kate York and Caitlyn Smith just sent this song in. The minute we all heard it we were like, ‘That’s the one.’” The film ends on a high, with another Rose-Lynn live performance, but one that’s in complete contrast to the unfettered chaos of ‘Outlaw State Of Mind’. “We must have done nearly 30 takes of that song, but I never lost my voice and I didn’t feel tired until the end,” says Buckley. “I was so full of what everybody was giving. It’s not just Rose-Lynn’s moment, it’s her and her relationship with her mum, with the people of Glasgow, and her kids. All of that coming together was like a swelling feeling, where you just let go.”

IF HARPER AND his producers had been able to hold on a little longer, there’s a strong chance that Buckley might have written the film’s final song herself. Because, while most of the songs we see Rose-Lynn play are covers, some original Buckley co-compositions did make their way into the film, and onto the movie’s soundtrack. But they only popped into being once the film had wrapped. “That happened by accident, really,” she says.

“We’d all lived with this character, and I was just messing around one day [in the studio], and one of the producers in Universal said, ‘Have you ever written?’ I’d written some lyrics and odd tunes in my head, but never really told anybody about them.” A few days later, Buckley had co-written enough songs for a solid EP, including ‘Alright To Be All Wrong (The Dreamer’s Song)’ and ‘Cigarette Row’. “It was an extra layer of narrative,” adds Buckley. “We would go around to Nicole Taylor’s house and it just poured out of us.” Oliver!’s loss is our gain.

CHRIS HEWITT