Heart – Nancy Wilson

Heart - Nancy Wilson

By: Lori Smerilson Carson

When you come from a musical family and music has always been your life, it’s natural that you would end up co-leading a world-renowned rock band, which is what Guitarist/Singer/Songwriter/Mandolin player Nancy Wilson has done with Heart and is still going strong. Starting her career that has spanned more than five decades now, she along with her sister, frontwoman Ann Wilson, has sold over thirty-five million albums worldwide spawning twenty top 40 hit singles, earned a Lifetime Achievement Grammy award, and have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Presently, these extraordinary musicians are on tour across the U.S. with their band Heart, and Florida fans had the opportunity to catch The Royal Flush Tour 2025 on June 24^th in Jacksonville at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, June 25^th in Estero at the Hertz Arena, June 27^th in Orlando at the Kia Center, and on June 28^th in Hollywood at Hard Rock Live.

Catching up with Wilson while on tour with bandmates Lead Vocalist/Flautist Ann Wilson, Guitarists Ryan Wariner and Ryan Waters, Guitarist/ Keyboardist/ Mandolin player Paul Moak, Bassist Tony Lucido and drummer Sean Lane, she revealed some details about the show, her music, her family influence, and what fans can look forward to.

SFL Music Magazine: What can fans look forward to with this Heart show, The Royal Flush Tour?

Nancy Wilson: This tour has been really great! First of all, we feel really kind of victorious and righteous to be able to be out here at all after Ann kicked the ass of cancer.

SFL Music Magazine: Yes, thankfully!

Wilson: We weren’t even sure we were going to be able to go out again. So, this is really sweeter than before, and the shows have been really energized. We’ve got one hundred percent live performance with our show. So, it’s a real rock band with no pre-records. I mean, anything can sort of happen at these shows (she laughed) and sometimes it does. Sometimes it’s like oops, you know. It’s weird because if we make one mistake or start over a song or something like that, people are so impressed that it’s actually really happening. It’s real live singing and playing. It’s kind of funny in a certain way. We have a very wide range; it’s a big spectrum of styles we have in our show. It ranges between real personal, romantic kind of spiritual acoustic love songs and music, and it goes all the way through funky stuff and stuff we like to dance around to, and then heavy ass rock ‘n roll like “Barracuda”. We do some (Led) Zeppelin and stuff too, and we switch it up. It’s not the same every night. We had a couple of instruments stolen at the first show in Atlantic City which we just got the second one back from the New Jersey police force that were really on it for us. We made friends with those guys (she laughed). They made sure that we got that mandolin back yesterday, and my custom-made purple sparkle Telecaster last week. So, we’re going to send them a big thank you, but tonight we might have to pull that mandolin out and do “Going to California” maybe because that’s the mandolin that was stolen and now it’s returned to its rightful home! I’m going to try to push for doing “Going to California” tonight so we can use the mandolin.

SFL Music Magazine: That’s terrible! When I heard about that I thought, who would do that? But I’m glad you got it back.

Wilson: We did get it back. It’s such a nice feeling when things go right. Like good karma kind of comes back to you because there is so much divisive, terrible, like there’s too many out there in the world that we’re just, oh my God! Something good happens, you want to make the most of it. Like, tell that story! Bring the smiles out.

SFL Music Magazine: What would you say inspires you when you write your music?

Wilson: It’s really an interesting thing. I think because we grew up with music all around us, it’s already in the DNA having a family that always had music playing. We had everything from, we went to see opera, and we loved blues, and we loved folk, and we loved classical and rock and roll, obviously. Everything from Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, to Peter, Paul and Mary. Then The Beatles came and then Led Zeppelin came along. All these great musical influences to be just saturated with all of our lives. So, it’s sort of an interesting thing when you also create music yourself. There’re so many things that come to you like even in a dream. A couple things have come to me. I wake up and I go, I better record this into my phone right away before it disappears. A couple of little melodies that go flying through your head. It’s not real obvious where it comes from, but I think with music in general, it’s something that’s in your cells. It’s not just a physical thing that you touch or it kind of floats around in the air because you could hear it from there. The vibrations come through the air, but it also lives in your cells. So, your body responds to it, cellular level reaction to it, and I think even in your brain cells, it’s a part of your body. So, it’s sort of mysterious to me where it actually comes from. When I start writing something, I’m not even sure where it comes from. I guess it’s kind of magical is the answer.

SFL Music Magazine: You started playing guitar at age nine and as far as The Beatles influence, you have made the comment that you and Ann wanted to be The Beatles?

Wilson: Yeah. We were not trying to marry them. We wanted to just be them. The same thing when I’m on stage, I’m just kind of channeling a little bit of Jimmy Page or a little bit of Paul McCartney. I’m just channeling my heroes. My musical mentors were all guys. Neil Young and a lot of great musicians that we emulated growing up. I mean, Ann’s voice is more emulated on Robert Plant than it ever was another woman’s voice. Then there’s the next generation of women like Sheryl Crow that came out and is like, “I emulated you guys.” We’re like, wow, that’s cool! We emulated guys and the next wave came along and emulated women more like us. So, that was a cool thing to learn lately about what gets passed along. It’s really cool!

SFL Music Magazine: I saw the YouTube video of Heart’s tribute to Led Zeppelin at the Kennedy Center.

Wilson: Oh yeah.

SFL Music Magazine: It was amazing! Jimmy Page’s smile! What would you say appealed to you about The Beatles and Led Zeppelin that they were your mentors?

Wilson: Well, The Beatles were before Zeppelin of course, but they had a great way of writing really catchy songs that had memorable song structure so you could hum that tune. We could still hum those tunes today that started out in the mid-sixties. With Zeppelin it was more in the seventies, and that was more of a mind expanded after the love generation came along in the late sixties. Mind expansion had already happened, and so Zeppelin came along and kind of reinvented the American blues by way of the English translation which even with The Beatles, they did the same thing. They kind of took American music and translated it through their English dialect like Zeppelin did later. So did Eric Clapton with his blues that he brought the English accent to American blues, and all that stuff. It was such an amazing time in music we got to grow up around, all the way through the nineties and the Seattle grunge explosion. All that great music from the eighties too. So, I feel really blessed to have come out of that era and have all those great influences.

SFL Music Magazine: When I interviewed Ann a few years ago, she talked about like you previously said, that you both came from a musical family.

Wilson: Right.

SFL Music Magazine: How do you think that may have contributed to the success that you both have had? Just having that encouragement?

Wilson: Oh, totally. Our mom and dad were both singers in a choir. We all played ukulele’s, aunts and uncles, Grandparents too. We had old English pub songs we would sing together. We’d tell ghost stories by the fireplace with our grandparents. Sing songs and tell stories. Very family ethical humor and music that we were lucky enough to be born into, and our third sister, we have three sisters. Lynn is the oldest of us three, and we had like a little small ensemble harmony band for a minute when I was ten. Then me and Ann started making bands together when Lynn went to college when I was twelve. It was just always about music, and really lucky to be in that definite direction. It was like destiny pointed me to my career from such an early age and I feel completely lucky about that today. My two twin boys are twenty-five now and they’re finding their way. Finding what their calling is supposed to be, but I knew at such a young age. I feel completely blessed by that.

SFL Music Magazine: You all have been nominated for several Grammy awards, received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and have sold over thirty-five million albums. What would you say attributes to the longevity and success of Heart?

Wilson: I think being just natural, full skin in the game musicians from a young age for sure, and also being in the military family, Marine Corps brats. We were so dogged and determined because we were a tight knit family moving around a lot, being stationed in different places around the world. So, we had each other and we had our music always inside our family. Ann decided to, we had bands, little folk bands, but when she decided to join a real band because she was old enough to play live clubs and stuff, my parents were really supportive. “Follow your bliss” was what they told us. I went to college for a while, but I knew I was going to join the band. As soon as I got a little time in college, I wanted to join her band. So, I thought I would go learn some stuff and bring it back into my creative songwriting part. Learn some stuff about creative writing and bring it back to my sister’s band which is basically what I did do. I brought the acoustic guitar into the sound of Heart and a lot of songwriting stuff. So, it was just always the dogged military ethic. We would not take no. We were a force unto ourselves, and we had each other inside of it. So, I think it gave us strength to have each other and just be naturally musical from the ground up.

SFL Music Magazine: Did you study music in college?

Wilson: I took some classes like music theory, but I already had a few piano lessons along the way and a few guitar lessons. I’ve learned everything by ear basically, just because when you grow up with a musical family, you know harmony singing, and the music, you learn it from your ear. You don’t have to learn it on a page. You learn it from your ears. Some people are not born with the ears, but in our family we’ve all got the ears, I guess.

SFL Music Magazine: You have a management and artist development company Roadcase?

Wilson: Yeah, Roadcase Management.

SFL Music Magazine: How did it come about?

Wilson: Well, my husband has a son Geoffrey Bywater who’s got the amazing ears, speaking of ears. He was always turning us on to like, “check out this artist.” The next thing you know, it would be the most massive artist on the radio in the culture. So, we were like, you have this amazing talent to find new talent, so why don’t we put together a little company to help discover and support and get the word out about new artists. For me as a person who’s done this all my life, I just feel like it’s a good time and a good way to help young talent find their way and be recognized for the work that they do that I’ve done all my life! So, Roadcase Management is all about that. I can have them send you the link to our two new artists if you’d like and check them out.

SFL Music Magazine: DeLoyd Elze (ffm.to/delze or on instagram.com @deloyd.elze) and Madisen XOXO (madisenxoxo.com)?

Wilson: Yeah, because DeLoyd just got signed with Concord record label and Madisen is just about to release a new amazing album. So yeah, it’s just a really natural progression of helping the next wave of artists make their way.

SFL Music Magazine: What would you recommend to an up-and-coming artist?

Wilson: Well, I have a joke about that because a lot of times they say, “what advice would you give to a young aspiring up-and-coming artist?” I usually say, like in The Wizard of Oz, I’d turn back if I were you! Like the sign going into the forest. Because there’s lions and tigers and bears in there! It’s really true! I mean, you have to really, really want it and you have to be good at it, and you can’t just like, dabble. If it’s a hobby, don’t go there if it’s just a hobby. You have to really want to sacrifice a lot for it, and it’s just got to be burning a hole in your pocket to go out there and sort of suffer for it (she laughed). You have to suffer for your art. There’s no two ways about it.

SFL Music Magazine: That’s good advice, and definitely a realist insight.

Wilson: And it’s got the visual to go along (she laughed)!

SFL Music Magazine: It does! That’s one of my favorite movies.

Wilson: You’ve got to see that every once in a while. It’s such a good one.

SFL Music Magazine: It is. Was there anything else that you want people to know about? Anything new coming out for Heart?

Wilson: One detail is, I have a new bonus track at the merch booth at the show with my solo album I put out a couple years ago, but there’s a bonus track on there now available on the CD. It’s a duet that I did with Ben Gibbard, Death Cab for Cutie singer. It’s a song I worked on with our Heart’s collaborator Sue Ennis, and Ben Gibbard and me sing it together. It’s just a cool new song that’s out there if anybody is interested. It’s right now only available at the Heart show, but we’re getting it ready for Spotify and we’re going to do a vinyl and all that stuff too.

SFL Music Magazine: Is Heart going to be making any new music?

Wilson: Well, for now we’re a touring company and that’s going to be until Christmas. So, next year we’re probably going to talk about some new material, but Ann’s got some new stuff with her side project Tripsitter which they’re going to do some new music that they’ve been working on. I’ve got other new songs for my solo stuff coming out after this tour. So, we’re just staying creative, but an actual Heart thing, not sure yet until we get off the road. It’s likely (she laughed).

SFL Music Magazine: Everyone can look forward to that! Was there anything you wanted to add?

Wilson: Just the thing that we do with our show is one hundred percent live. So, there’s no pre-records and it’s a real rock band, so we feel kind of like we’re among the last of the real rock bands roaming the earth these days (she laughed). It’s a good show! Anybody, come on out! See us!