Tanya Tucker, left, and Brandi Carlile in The Return of Tanya Tucker (Jessica Young/Sony Pictures Classics)

The banally descriptive title of Kathlyn Horan’s documentary, The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile, makes it seem as if the filmmakers have hedged their bets on whether country singer Tucker has enough name recognition on her own to draw an audience. Even something like Tanya and Brandi in the Studio would have been more evocative, but the chosen title spells it out for anyone to know what to expect.

Title aside, Horan has made an engrossing account of the recording of 2019’s While I’m Livin’, the first album of all-original material in 17 years by Tucker, who is assisted in the studio by co-producer (with Shooter Jennings) and songwriter Carlile. The movie’s main interest lies in watching the mutual respect between the two women. Tucker, a country music veteran who had her first hit, 1972’s “Delta Dawn,” at age 13, upset country purists six years later when she recorded a rock album, TNT, and lived the sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll lifestyle for a while. The other artist, an out lesbian, has forged a successful career creating music far afield from conventional country.

The women hit it off right from the start, and the songs soon start pouring out (along with the tequila to loosen up their voices). Although Carlile writes the bulk of them with her usual partners Tim and Phil Hanseroth, the unfinished tune that Tucker brings into the studio, “Bring My Flowers Now,” eventually wins a Grammy as best country song. But as engaging as their studio sessions are—Carlile is in thrall to Tucker’s weather-beaten, leathery voice, and when they sing together, the blend is magical—the more intimate scenes of them conversing are the most fascinating. (Tucker says that after decades of smoking, she should finally quit.)

Tucker casually pooh-poohs her legendary status, remarking at various points that she was influenced by, or even “stole” (in her words) her singing style from, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, and Elvis Presley, for starters. For her part, Carlile tells Tucker how big a fan she is throughout the recording sessions and in their conversations. In a lovely fangirl moment, Tucker is singing in the studio, with Carlile standing behind her, grinning at how lucky she is to witness Tucker’s comeback, which she is helping to make happen.

Throughout, Horan adroitly weaves in flashbacks that feature home-movie footage of Tucker as a young girl in Arizona and later singing her best-known songs at different points in her career, as well as showing how her cocaine-fueled affair with Glen Campbell was covered by the tabloids and TV. Glimpses of her appearances on talk shows during her partying years culminates with a very nervous-looking Tucker trying to answer Tom Snyder’s questions on his late-night talk show.

That makes Tucker’s comeback (she just turned 64 last month) even more satisfying, for both Tanya and Brandi, her biggest fan.