Speaker 1: You Welcome, Welcome back. So that's the title track from
Speaker 1: Nancy Wilson's first ever solo album. It's entitled You and
Speaker 1: Me the track in the album. Nancy, of course, along
Speaker 1: with her sister Anne, are the iconic rock band Heart
Speaker 1: in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They were
Speaker 1: touring just before the world shut down because of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: and during the past year as the world stopped, Nancy
Speaker 1: produced this new album working at our home studio. It
Speaker 1: will be released May seven. Let's get more cuss Lucky
Speaker 1: for us. Joining us is singer songwriter Nancy Wilson, also
Speaker 1: author of Heart memoir Kicking and Dreaming, and she joins
Speaker 1: us on Zoom in Los Angeles. Nancy, it's so nice
Speaker 1: to have you here with us. How are you. I'm good.
Speaker 1: How are you doing over there? We're doing okay. You know,
Speaker 1: we're feeling like things are starting to re open a
Speaker 1: little bit. How does l A feel. Yeah, yeah, Well
Speaker 1: I'm in northern California now. We moved here right in
Speaker 1: time for the shutdown actually, which was a very very
Speaker 1: lucky thing for us because we got to kind of
Speaker 1: get out of this the big city, which was maybe
Speaker 1: a little more scary to be there then, but uh,
Speaker 1: now it's you know, it's been going well that there
Speaker 1: seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 1: Um because of the vaccines obviously, and the and following
Speaker 1: all the rules and the protocol is working. So it's
Speaker 1: really a beautiful, um thing to be able to say,
Speaker 1: you know, go into inside in a restaurant and you know,
Speaker 1: with a mask of course. But and then you know,
Speaker 1: we dined for for our anniversary and the other night
Speaker 1: we went and had dinner at our favorite restaurant and
Speaker 1: that was like really like oh my god, really exciting
Speaker 1: right right, like getting back to quote unquote normal. Um,
Speaker 1: it's interesting over the past year, a lot of musicians
Speaker 1: and it sounds like yourself, you know, once you found
Speaker 1: your footing, have been very creative and productive over the
Speaker 1: past year. Tell us about this new album that you
Speaker 1: are putting out. Well, I I started realizing, you know,
Speaker 1: after we moved in and and and we realized we
Speaker 1: might be here for a while, shut that shut into
Speaker 1: our home and not daring to go out and you
Speaker 1: know even touch anything or just all of the sphere
Speaker 1: at the beginning of this thing. Um, but I did
Speaker 1: have a new space to do music in. So I
Speaker 1: got my stuff, you know, out of storage. I pulled
Speaker 1: it into my space. I got my best guitars out.
Speaker 1: I got my amps out, and my pedals and my
Speaker 1: microphones and my new interface. A friend of mine knows
Speaker 1: how to run for me, and uh, just a real
Speaker 1: simple gere and just the simplest but you know, the
Speaker 1: old guitars that have the good sounding dirt in them,
Speaker 1: the old amplifiers that have the good sounding dirt in them.
Speaker 1: And decided to start writing again since a lot of
Speaker 1: people have said, why aren't you going to do it's
Speaker 1: all album? Ever, You've never done it yet, so only
Speaker 1: a live thing once, but that wasn't a studio album,
Speaker 1: and and so I started to write. And the first
Speaker 1: thing I wrote was called UM, we Meet Again, which
Speaker 1: I thought was a kind of a long view at
Speaker 1: the horizon of your life a little bit, and feeling
Speaker 1: like when you have somebody that you love that you're
Speaker 1: you're gonna be there with, You're gonna be there for them,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna be there for you for the for
Speaker 1: the entire ride. So UM. I thought it turned out nice,
Speaker 1: and so I kept writing, and I kept writing, UM
Speaker 1: and and then I decided to do the Rising of
Speaker 1: Bruce of Bruce Springsteen cover uh pretty early on because
Speaker 1: I saw how the world was suffering and how that
Speaker 1: song had been written for nine eleven originally, which I
Speaker 1: thought was really appropriate for the times, and it might
Speaker 1: be something maybe a little aspirational for people trying to
Speaker 1: get through all of this loss and all of the
Speaker 1: fear and all of the suffering involved in this whole
Speaker 1: this whole whip lash of experience we had to be
Speaker 1: tossed into, you know. So I think, um, it's sort
Speaker 1: of a woman's voice singing a song like that was
Speaker 1: even more kind of mothering and nurturing and and aspirational.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of where it started out, and I
Speaker 1: kept I just kept on building songs. Well, tell tell
Speaker 1: me that because it really does feel like a very
Speaker 1: thoughtful and very deep and very reflective of what you
Speaker 1: were going through. And I think it will I think
Speaker 1: for people who listen to it will feel um some
Speaker 1: connection easily with things that they were going through. And
Speaker 1: one of the things I think about the past year,
Speaker 1: we lost some really incredible people in the music industry,
Speaker 1: and you have a tribute to Eddie Van Hale and
Speaker 1: let's talk about that. Yeah. Well, somebody said You've got
Speaker 1: to do an instrumental song on your album, which I said, okay,
Speaker 1: you can twist my arm, you know, because I love
Speaker 1: just playing instrumental stuff because I did a lot of
Speaker 1: score scoring of movies before in the past, and it's
Speaker 1: it's a great thing to be able to transition between
Speaker 1: songwriting and just instrumental writing. Um so I somebody said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll do I agreed to do it. And then I said,
Speaker 1: and not only that, I'm going to dedicate it to
Speaker 1: Eddie van Halen. And then and then I was like
Speaker 1: why did I say that? Like I was like, oh no,
Speaker 1: now I've really painted myself into ak Arner, you know,
Speaker 1: because I have to not have to actually come up
Speaker 1: with it and figure out how to do it, and
Speaker 1: and you did. So I really avoided it. I avoided it.
Speaker 1: I've procrastinated as long as possible. I finally got my
Speaker 1: head around it when I thought about, you know, Eddie's
Speaker 1: I listened to Eddie that even I listened to Van
Speaker 1: Halen songs and I watched a bunch of his footage
Speaker 1: and I've thought, well, here's something I know that I
Speaker 1: could try to do, is it's something in a very
Speaker 1: happy key. Like his music was all very major key stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: you don't hear a lot of blues slicks, you know.
Speaker 1: In Van Halen songs, you're you're positive, forth right, jubilant stuff.
Speaker 1: So that helped me figure out, like how to find
Speaker 1: the right key, the right tuning, the right um structure
Speaker 1: where you've a little bit of a classical, a little
Speaker 1: bit of rock in the middle, and then a little
Speaker 1: classical at the end and not too long like in
Speaker 1: score scoring for film with anything without lyrics in it,
Speaker 1: you know, might tax the listener a little bit, right.
Speaker 1: I kept it short and sweet, you know, just for Edward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love the title for Edward. And I mean you
Speaker 1: guys toured together with Eddie van Halen. I mean, do
Speaker 1: you have a story of memory, you know, remember the
Speaker 1: first time you met him. Well, we did tour a
Speaker 1: bunch of different places and times together, um, and we
Speaker 1: always found each other hitting it off, you know, like
Speaker 1: backstage or you know at the hotel, passing in the hallway,
Speaker 1: you know, and they were like, Hey, come down and
Speaker 1: have a drink with us in the hotel bar. And
Speaker 1: so it's like okay, great, we'll get to know you.
Speaker 1: And so they were drinking kama kazis and like, whoa,
Speaker 1: what is that? Here? Try one? You know, so're like, WHOA,
Speaker 1: how do you drink more than one of those? I'll
Speaker 1: never know. And those guys were pretty, you know, pretty
Speaker 1: heavy duty party ers, and they were pretty primal with it.
Speaker 1: They would get all tangled in some kind of an argument, meant,
Speaker 1: and then they they started hugging and going, I love
Speaker 1: you man, and they were just really primal with their party.
Speaker 1: And but they were really sweet guys. And Eddie is
Speaker 1: a sweet person who was very We were just we
Speaker 1: were kind of fond of each other because he's told
Speaker 1: me he liked my guitar, my acoustic playing, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe he even said it, you know. And and
Speaker 1: then he's I said, what about you, Why don't you
Speaker 1: play more acoustic? And he said, well, I don't have
Speaker 1: an acoustic. I made a little video story storyteller video
Speaker 1: about it with the song but um, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have this guitar right now because you need
Speaker 1: an acoustic. So early the next morning, when it's just
Speaker 1: getting light, he calls my hotel room and plays me
Speaker 1: this gorgeous piece of instrumental acoustic music, which I when
Speaker 1: I was trying to recall that as much as I
Speaker 1: possibly could do for the for Edward tribute song. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if I get close, but it's got something.
Speaker 1: It's really got it done. It's a it's a really
Speaker 1: lovely tribute. I have to say, Um, we only have
Speaker 1: about a minute or so or a minute and a
Speaker 1: half left here. Uh, you're incredible. I grew up with
Speaker 1: a lot of music, from Sinatra and Polkas to the Beatles,
Speaker 1: the Dead Heart, you name name it. So um, you know,
Speaker 1: music really shaped me and my family, and I can
Speaker 1: kind of feel it. I feel like when you talk
Speaker 1: about it and how it influences you and the people
Speaker 1: you met. I have to say one of my favorite
Speaker 1: things that you and your sister did was the Kennedy
Speaker 1: Center Honors when you guys covered the leaded Zeppelin Stairway
Speaker 1: to Heaven. Uh. That must have been incredible to do
Speaker 1: with led Zeppelin looking on. Yeah, well we couldn't. Luckily
Speaker 1: we could not see them in the balcony from the
Speaker 1: stage because of the light they were tearing out that
Speaker 1: you know, But I mean it was like that was
Speaker 1: a tough room, you know that that's all these dignitaries
Speaker 1: and really fame as people, and the President and the
Speaker 1: First Lady were there too, and and le Zeppelin no less,
Speaker 1: so you know, we were, um, we were very methodical
Speaker 1: in our approach to uh focusing in on starting the song.
Speaker 1: We had to take a really really deep breath and
Speaker 1: you know, like a yoga kind of a breath. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I started all by myself on one guitar, and I
Speaker 1: remember it was very it was a bit of a challenge,
Speaker 1: and but I knew that I knew the song. I
Speaker 1: played the song most of my life one way or another,
Speaker 1: including in Heart along the Way well, and it was
Speaker 1: just don't don't be in a hurry, got it? Hold
Speaker 1: Nancy Hans, we gotta rhyn and everybody should check out
Speaker 1: your album. Thank you so much, really appreciate