To Say Goodbye: Remembering Joey Feek’s Top Musical Moments

(Joey + Rory in 2012. Photo: Mindy Small/Getty Images)

If you need some consolation over the death of country singer Joey Martin Feek, who died today at age 40 after battling cancer, there’s no one better to go to than… Joey Martin Feek. The marital/musical duo Joey + Rory leaned very much toward the traditional side of country music, and that included old-school numbers about the heartaches associated with mortality, some of which came to feel fairly premonitory after Feek made her terminal cancer diagnosis public. There’s no need to go outside Joey + Rory’s own catalogue to find a ballad about loss that’ll prompt a tear. or a gospel tune that’ll help dry one.

Not that Joey + Rory spent an undue amount of their time submerged in sadness. Theirs was one of the all-time great country love stories, and there’s a flirtiness in most of their music videos that no one for a second would ever mistake for acting. In honor of Joey Martin Feek, one of the most beautiful-inside-and-out singers the genre ever knew, here is a look back at a dozen video highlights.

CAN YOU DUET? SUBMISSION VIDEO (2007)

When they were trying out for CMT’s Can You Duet? talent show nine years ago, Joey + Rory put together some self-shot footage that let producers see the reality of both their romance with each other and their love for traditional country. “She just opens her mouth and the world moves,” raved Rory Lee Feek. “At least mine does.” (It’s OK, Rory: You can speak for all of us.) He went on to sketch his wife’s life on her own — she “owns a restaurant, ropes and rides, drives a truck, and doesn’t go anywhere without her hound Rufus by her side” — as well as their charmed coexistence in an 1870s Tennessee farmhouse. Clearly, CMT’s producers swooned, just as we soon would.

CAN YOU DUET?: “HOW’S THE WORLD TREATING YOU”/“FREE BIRD” (2008)

Inexplicably, Joey + Rory only came in third in their season of Can You Duet?. That’s hard to fathom, watching this assemblage of footage that includes their performances of the country classic “How’s the World Treating You” and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.” Judge Naomi Judd, seen singing their praises here, loved them so much that she couldn’t resist a cameo in their first official music video later that year.

“CHEATER, CHEATER” (2008)

This first single and video after the duo signed to Sugar Hill Records was clearly the least autobiographical song Joey + Rory ever did, as they could barely keep straight faces or keep their hands off each other while acting out a scenario where Joey portrays an angry, cheated-upon spouse. Joey still gave good sass, even if she couldn’t convince us she meant it. Make sure not to turn off the video before the denouement that shows the Other Woman to be… Naomi Judd, who couldnn’t even get through three words without cracking up.

“TO SAY GOODBYE” (2008)

While “Cheater, Cheater” showed off their spunky side, the duo proved they could get weighty as they simultaneously recorded this death-themed song. The first verse dealt with 9/11, and the second with a still-living spouse dealing with dementia, finding commonality in the verse: “It ain’t that we can’t let them go/We just want to say goodbye.” With Joey’s long goodbye, at least family, friends, and fans got that chance.

“PLAY THE SONG” (2009)

The playful spirit in this number was just a little deceptive, as Joey + Rory addresed the roadblocks they knew they’d come up against in getting contemporary country radio to play their material. They were portrayed going through a succession of record company executive suites (“With a few adjustments here and there, we can really take you big,” promised real-life exec Larry Pareigis, spoofing himself) as well as a parade of ill-suited outfits. News alert: Joey looked pretty hot even dressed up as a metal chick… and a little like Kacey Musgraves would, years later, whenever she puts on a cowgirl dress.

“SEE YOU THERE” (2009)

This was a Joey “solo” song, recorded before her partnership with Rory and released later, in which she remembered the death of her beloved brother in an automobile accident 15 years prior. Now, at last, believers would say, she’s seen him there.

“THAT’S IMPORTANT TO ME” (2010)

“Always having you to hold/Being besides you when we grow old/When they plant us ‘neath that big oak tree/That’s important to me.” Tragically, the line about growing old together was not premonitory. But what was remarkable about this video is how many of the benchmarks it hit for portraying what could be considered stereotypical country music-video living — cooking, gardening, hands held in prayer — without anyone imagining for a moment that this wasn’t Joey and Rory’s real life.

“THIS SONG’S FOR YOU” FEAT. ZAC BROWN (2010)

You’d call this one of the few true duets Joey + Rory put on record, with the husband taking a lead vocal alongside his wife, if not for the fact that Zac Brown showed up late in the proceedings and made it a triple-lead. It was a nod to fandom, and also, in passing, an acknowledgement of Joey + Rory’s place just outside the mainstream of country music (“If you paid your hard-earned money to that bouncer at the door/To hear the kind of songs you don’t get to hear much anymore”).

“HEADACHE” (2011)

When Rory imagines he can skip out on his “honey do” task list to go fishing with the boys, Joey threatens to put her new red negligee on lockdown and develop a sex-debilitating condition (“I think this one’s a migraine/It might last all year long”). Is it any surprise that, by video’s end, Rory has sent his pals packing and chosen hanky-panky over playing hooky? Joey + Rory could pull off a sexy song like this and still become stars of Christian TV, their partnership making as good a living advertisement for marital fidelity as country ever had.

“WHEN I’M GONE” (2012)

Here’s the serious weeper of the bunch. And they didn’t shy away from it after Joey’s diagnosis, because the two of them re-recorded it a few months ago as a bonus track for their final release. The original version, from the His and Hers album four years ago, could hardly seem any more like it was written for the occasion of Joey’s death. Single tears flowed from both of their eyes as they imagined her passing and she sang: “You’ll lie down in our big bed/Dread the dark and dread the dawn/But you’ll be all right/On that first night/When I’m gone.” As much as we’d like to believe that’s true for Rory, those sentiments are probably easier said than mourned.

“IF I NEEDED YOU” (2014)

“I made the video right after Indy was born as a way to share this special gift that God had given us with others,” Rory said. More recently, he blogged that Joey wanted to try to stay alive to see their daughter turn 2 years old in February; she just made it across that mark, with her husband able to share photos of the mother/daughter birthday celebration, echoing the post-birth stills seen in this video.

“IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL” (2016)

Media attention to their tragic circumstance was so prominent that Joey + Rory’s final album, Hymns and Stories That Are Important to Us, immediately became their best-selling album ever in the week after its Feb. 12 release, with first-week sales of more than 60,000. Before she became further bedridden a few months ago, Joey was able to join with Rory and band to film 11 live performances of material from the album. The most celebratory of them is the upbeat “I’ll Fly Away,” but there may be no hymn more powerful than “It is Well With My Soul,” whether a singer who finds herself in tribulation really means it, is putting on a brave face, or both.