Simon Cox Blog: Q+A: ‘To Joey, with Love’

Wednesday, 14 September 2016

Q+A: ‘To Joey, with Love’

Country musician Rory Feek shares about faith, heartbreak, and his new film.

Just two years ago, Joey and Rory Feek, better known as Joey + Rory, were on the top of the world. With their traditional sound, the award-winning country duo had carved out a niche for themselves in Nashville and released a number of popular albums. They lived on a beautiful farm in Tennessee, co-owned a restaurant, and had their own TV show. Their daughter, Indiana, had just been born. Though her Down syndrome diagnosis was unexpected, they welcomed her with joy.

Then Joey was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and their world was shaken.

Joey lived less than two years after her diagnosis, but she and her family filled those years with memorable moments and experiences, documented by Rory on his blog, This Life I Live. Rory’s new film, To Joey, with Love, tells the story of those final two years together. The film releases in movie theaters on September 20, and again on October 6, through Fathom Events.

I interviewed Rory about the film.

What gave you the idea to make a movie about Joey?

A few weeks after Joey's funeral service, I started going through all the footage that we had filmed over the last two and a half years, and it became immediately clear that what we had captured was more than just a bunch of home movies. Just like the story that Joey and I had been living and sharing through my blog, there was an even more powerful story in those clips that needed to be shared.

Joey was obviously a wonderful mother to Indiana, yet you say in your narration that she was afraid at first to become a mother. Where did those fears come from?

She had never really been around babies or children and didn’t really have any desire to be. It wasn’t in her DNA, or at least she didn’t think it was. All of it scared ...