Tami Neilson, two-time winner of the New Zealand Music Award for Best Country Album 2009 and 2010, was raised in Canada by parents with a closet full of sequined stage costumes and platform shoes.

She grew up in a house where amplifiers and guitar cases were just as much a part of the furniture as chairs and tables, and when most kids are still singing nursery rhymes in the bathtub, she was traveling across North America in a 34 foot motor home, performing professionally in her family band,...