Tayla Lynn fans attending Friday’s concert at the Marysville Opera House are in for a special treat.
She will be singing a new song from her soon-to-be released album that she calls “probably the most honest song I’ve ever written.”
Entitled “She’s the Blue in My Eyes,” it’s written about the person in her life she calls Memaw, but who the public knows as her grandmother, country music legend Loretta Lynn.
As soon as she finished writing it, she went to her grandmother’s house. “I have to play a song for you,” she told Loretta.
When Lynn got to the song’s tag, “she’s the blue in my eyes,” Lynn said her grandmother held her face in her hands and they both cried.
“It’s one of the sweetest moments we’ve ever had,” Lynn said. “To move her with something I wrote, it doesn’t get any better than that.”
Lynn, 41, said she will be singing several of her grandmother’s songs at Friday’s concert. She will be accompanied by the band Jellyrollers, heard on her most recent album, “The Ranch,” as well as her upcoming, still unnamed album.
The new album was just one of the topics she discussed during a telephone interview this week as she walked a Whidbey Island beach. She talked about her life in a way so relaxed, it sounded as if she was chatting with a neighbor over a backyard fence.
She said she was happy to be in the Seattle area, staying with her husband’s parents, who “cook my dinners and the coffee is by the bed in the morning.”
The local weather has been a welcome break from her Tennessee home, a 30-acre farm where “it’s so dang gum hot — 100 degrees and humid.”
“I said, ‘Yes, I’ll have to go to work in Seattle, and walk on the beach with a sweater on,’ ” she said.
It’s a trip made without her husband and her two children, ages 2 and 5, where she could indulge in simple pleasures like getting her nails done.
Her stop in Washington is part of a national tour that included a performance in Darrington’s Spur Fest last weekend — “it was so fun” — and Friday’s stop in Marysville before moving on to concerts in cities from Ontario, Canada, to Oceanside, California.
Lynn said she’s been getting booked so much that her husband, Jon Cody, quit his job to be a stay-at-home dad.
About six years ago, she and her husband lived in the Seattle area. She was pregnant. She previously had toured with all-female group Stealing Angels and performed with Loretta Lynn.
“When I got pregnant, everything just came to a stop,” she said.
Her husband had a job at Amazon. She thought her music career might be over.
Then she started playing with the band known as the Jellyrollers “and started creating what my music feels like today.”
Her album now in the works is being produced by John Carter Cash — yep, Johnny Cash’s son — a project that was completely crowdfunded, she said.
Lynn said she will finish the vocals on it next week. The goal is to have it out by the end of the summer.
She said she is thankful for a husband “so awesome that he wants me to pursue my dream while he takes care of the farm and babies,” while allowing her to come home to mother her children.
She said she’s also thankful to have to opportunity to play in Marysville.
“All my girlfriends are in Lynnwood, so they’re coming, in-laws will be coming,” she said. “It’s going to be super fun.”
Tickets still remain for the opera house performance, with its intimate 200-seat setting and a venue known for its unusually good acoustics.
“I’m hoping we’ll sell that puppy out; it’s my hope and prayer,” she said.
Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
If you go
Tayla Lynn is scheduled to perform at 7:30 p.m. June 29 at the Marysville Opera House, 1225 Third St., Marysville. Doors open at 6:45 p.m. for the concert, with festival seating. Tickets are $15 and are available online at www.marysvillewa.gov. Call 360-363-8000 for more information.
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