“I don’t want to look like a fuckwit” says Wanita, Australia’s Queen of Honky Tonk in Matthew Walker’s knockout, knock-about doco, I’M WANITA.

Well, that’s going to be in the eye of the beholder as we embark on bizarre adventure from Tamworth to Memphis, New Orleans and Nashville, and back again.

Phonetically named Wanita only ever wanted to be a country music megastar.

Like her idol Loretta Lynn.

Variously described as a drunk Mother Theresa, she definitely has talent, and drive. But, as they say, you should not drive drunk, and Wanita, Australia’s Queen of Honky Tonk is also subject to plonk.

If there’s a thin line between pleasure and pain, love and hate, then there is an equally sinewy skien between self belief and delusional. I’M WANITA walks that line.

Estranged from her daughter, Elly May, who says she has a jaded relationship with her mother because she put career before kid, the 47 year old is married to Hubby Baba, her 72 year old Turkish Spaghetti Western cowboy. There is a whopping great story within that relationship itself, how it came to be and how its course is an endurance test beyond comprehension.

Strapped for cash, Wanita wandered into sex work to support her art, a means to an end, is all.

Self defined as on the spectrum, Wanita makes a “Calculated executive decision with myself” to go to America, visit Memphis, New Orleans and Nashville, cut an album, play some life performances and visit Loretta Lynn.

She has an entourage – manager Glenny Rae Virus and bagman cum troubador, Archer. Life on the road is certainly a big adventure and causes some big adversities between the trio, thanks to Wanita being a bugger for the bottle.

She’s a country member, too country for country, born in the wrong era, perhaps the wrong country.

There are acts and there are artists- you be the judge.

Richard Cotter