Even big-time country music stars get the butterflies.
The stars – and maybe even the butterflies – don’t come any bigger today than Gretchen Wilson of “Redneck Woman” fame.
Wilson recently launched her first arena tour as a headliner and admitted to a big case of nerves just hours before the tour’s Texas kickoff.
“I was so stressed and nervous yesterday that I couldn’t even eat,” Wilson said in a telephone interview. “I didn’t eat a single thing yesterday. I just had a lot going on.
“I visited some radio stations yesterday morning. And then I had a press conference and then I had to do two songs live in the afternoon. Then we went in and did a full run-through of the show. After that is when I started feeling a little more at ease. I just had to get through that rundown of the show.”
The Redneck Revolution tour, which stops at the World Arena in Colorado Springs tonight, is not Wilson’s first large-venue tour. She opened for Kenny Chesney on one of last year’s biggest tours.
But this time out she’s responsible for filling the seats.
“It’s a whole different ballgame,” Wilson said. “It’s all on me now. There has been a lot of pressure leading up to this tour. I basically have been planning and working and getting the set together and the lighting and the stage. Picking the crew and all that kind of stuff. We’ve been working on it for months.”
Everything tour audiences see and hear was either something she came up with or something she approved.
“We are doing something kind of unique onstage: My drum riser and keyboard riser, all the risers that my players are standing on, are actually built of video cubes,” Wilson said.
Newcomer Blaine Larson, who opens the show, is a remarkable talent with an amazing voice, she said.
“Then we’ve got Van Zant who, God, just feels like home,” Wilson said.
Van Zant is Johnny and
Donnie Van Zant, who have plenty of big-time tours with Lynyrd Skynyrd and .38 Special, respectively.
“Seeing those guys just takes you back,” Wilson said. “You can hear so many of the moments in your life of listening to Skynyrd and .38 Special. It is all coming together there onstage and new material. It’s just really, really – I don’t know. It just makes me feel right at home.”
Wilson, a former bartender from Pocahontas, Ill., exploded like a cherry bomb on the country music scene in 2004 with “Redneck Woman,” which stood at No.1 for many weeks on Billboard’s country single chart.
“I think it had been a long time since blue-collar women from small-town U.S.A. had been paid tribute to in that fashion from a female vocalist,” Wilson said about the song’s success. “I think it was almost like a revolution. It was just something that they’d been waiting to hear for a while.”
She expected the song to be a hit with at least one slice of America but never guessed it would resonate with women in Los Angeles as much the women in her small hometown.
“You know what?” she said. “That song was not about being a redneck. It was about being a real woman and doing it the way you want to and living life the way you want to.
“That’s what resonated with them. It was just something they wanted to hear.”
The phenomenal popularity of “Redneck Woman” set the stage for her debut album “Here for the Party,” which sits at No.28 after 90 weeks on Billboard’s country chart. It also enjoyed a long run as the No.1 country album.
Despite that success, the singer said she felt no pressure when she entered the studio to record her second CD, “All Jacked Up.”
“I know that I had heard from several people that I was supposed to feel pressure with the sophomore record and trying to beat the first one,” Wilson said. “But it really isn’t about that for me. It’s not about beating anything.
“You write the best song you can or you find the best songs you can, or both in my case,” she said. “And you go into the studio and produce the best record you can. You sing the best you can. And you get the right players.
“When it’s all said and done and I sit and listen to it and I’m 100 percent satisfied with it, then I can’t do anymore.”
“All Jacked Up” debuted at No.1 on the country and pop charts. But its stay at the top was shorter than her first album. It now stands at No.23 on the country chart after 18 weeks.
Wilson became an overnight star after living in Nashville for six years and trying to get someone to believe in her roots-country sound. “It took me all those six years to find a record company that was willing to take that leap with me,” she said.
When she broke out of the pack of hopefuls, Wilson found her career was moving so fast she had no time to react to it.
“All I could do was try to get finished with one project and into the next,” she said. “It was just a really quick moving thing. … I felt like I had no control over anything.”
But Wilson feels like she has regained control and that she’s “in the best possible spot that I can be in right now, professionally and personally.”
That can keep a whole swarm of butterflies at bay.
Staff writer Ed Will can be reached at 303-820-1694 or ewill@denverpost.com.
Gretchen Wilson
COUNTRY MUSIC|World Arena, 3185 Venetucci Blvd., Colorado Springs; 7:30 tonight|$34.50- $44.50|866-464-2626 or visit ticketswest.com
This article has been corrected, online. In print, it originally contained an incorrect reference to Gretchen Wilson’s CD, “Redneck Woman.” Also, Wilson canceled her Colorado Springs concert, on the day it was scheduled. Tickets to the canceled show will be honored at the rescheduled concert, or ticketholders may get a refund at the point of purchase.
