Washington state has long punched well above its weight, producing iconic rock musicians who created classic songs and were undeniably influential. Seattle native Jimi Hendrix was an electric guitar virtuoso beyond reproach who dazzled with technical wizardry. The Seattle grunge boom refreshed the rock scene with heavy music carried by an underlying melodicism. The Olympia riot grrrl scene taught generations of young girls to make wonderfully rebellious noise.
But there's only one Washington group that mixes that technical prowess, melodic hard rock and fierce feminine energy while also displaying a much rarer trait for the rock game: longevity.
That band is Heart.
Since the early 1970s, the group led by the Seattle sister duo of singer Ann Wilson and guitarist Nancy Wilson have been blazing a trail all their own. While the band started in more of the folk rock realm, the latter half of the 1970s saw Heart craft massive classic hard rock singles like "Crazy On You" and "Barracuda." In an era when women hard rockers were beyond unusual, the Wilson sisters were running laps around the boys. After hitting a commercial rut at the start of the 1980s, Heart made a big comeback as queens of the power ballad in the mid-'80s with songs like "These Dreams" and "Alone." And more than 50 years after the band's formation, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers still know how to put on a show.
Heart was initially slated to play Spokane in December 2024, but plans for that tour got derailed earlier that year in the wake of Ann Wilson being diagnosed with cancer. After undergoing surgery and chemotherapy, Ann has been cleared to resume rocking with Heart again, which is exactly what she'll be doing when the band heads to Spokane Arena on March 11.
Before Heart hits the stage, we caught up with Nancy Wilson to ask about family dynamics, hair metal copping their style and getting to return to the "loud office."
INLANDER: Since the concert was delayed from December after Ann's cancer diagnosis, I have to start by asking how she's doing health-wise.
WILSON: You know, I've been saying when people ask about it: God bless modern science. Because she came, she saw, she kicked its ass, and now she's doing great. She looks great, she sounds great. We've been in rehearsal in Nashville, and we do tech rehearsal in Vegas before the show starts. It's just the best, because we had to postpone for eight months — and it was scary, you know — and we just are back with full force, and everyone's really relieved and excited to be able to get back into the loud office and do the loud job. No matter how much sleep I don't get or bad pizza I have to eat, we're still lucky to be here.
How has it been navigating being in a band with your sister for most of your life?
That's better than saying "Do you guys fight?" [Laughs] Thank God, we're not guys. Thank God, we're not brothers in a rock band because historically, that's a bad scene. But in our case, it's different because we're women. I think naturally, women are more nurturing with each other and support each other, and can put up with a lot of extraneous politics and flack that swirl around.
So my analogy always is — there's a hurricane called Heart. We're the center. We're the calm center of the hurricane — you look straight up and you see blue sky, and everything else is just kind of ridiculous drama that unnecessarily swirls around you because there's a lot of money and power involved. But we make all the final decisions together, and we just have to tune out the noise a lot of the time.
It is fascinating to see how Heart's appreciation has shifted over the years. Not only have you shifted sounds from heavy rock to ballads and a lot in between, but also you've gone from people treating y'all as a novelty — like "look it's the girls playing hard rock" — to being appreciated for the wildly influential trailblazers that you are.
Right. At first folks were like, "Wow! How do you maintain your femininity and wield a big rock show at the same time?!" And then later in the mid-'80s it's like, "Wow. You're up there wielding the big guitar on an MTV video!" While the rock guys [at the time] were playing a million songs that started with the same undistinguishable chunky riff and trying to get the same hair and clothing as us.
[Laughs]
And then in the '90s, we kind of took a break with the Lovemongers. And people became fans of the Lovemongers because it was kind of underground Heart. And then in the 2000s, the Kennedy Center [performance] kind of put us back on the map, like, "Whoa, they're still there!" The cultural imprints that continue to tail through the decades are pretty cool.
At this point, what are your favorite songs to play live?
I really do love playing "Barracuda," believe it or not. It's just got an energy that you can't beat. The energy of "Crazy on You" is the same thing. It's really muscular, and it just resonates, you know? It electrifies the room every time.
We've dusted off a couple things — a song called "Treat Me Well," that I wrote in high school. And another one called "Sand" that was a Lovemongers tune, that only ended up as a Heart track on a B-side of a Japanese release. But the fans know the song.
You released your first solo album, You and Me, in 2021. What keeps your musical creativity flowing after decades on the job?
It's really fun to be in a rock band, especially when everyone knows how to play. We still are working on original material. The band's got a bunch of new songs. I've got a bunch of new songs. Me and Sue Ennis are still writing songs that Ann can be part of as well. So you know, the original creative spark is still burning strong inside. We don't just go on tour and go home and just watch football or whatever. They should have us on a halftime show though. The next Super Bowl should have Heart.
How does the creative spark differ now as opposed to what it inspired when you were first writing songs back in the early years?
It's a whole process. We write differently now. When we started writing during and then after high school, around college age. When you're writing songs in that era — in your 20s and stuff — you feel like you're wise beyond your experience. You have the ancient wisdom of things that haven't happened to you yet in your life, which is a beautiful time to be creative, because it's like the wisdom of pain you have not yet experienced. You have not had all that loss or all of that disappointment yet. So you're projecting this spiritual wisdom into the future of what's coming. And that's what stuff the album Dog & Butterfly is all about.
And today, we're writing about a lot of the same kind of spiritual, aspirational feelings. Life does beat the shit out of you. It does. And if you start with a lot of really strong, good, positive intentions, you're going to come out better than if you start with low expectations and cynicism going in. And it's hard not to do that, because there's a lot of tragedy, poetic tragedy, drama. If you're lucky, you don't get sucked into that vortex too early. So we try to maintain a positive attitude in the aspiration of trying to be inspiring with creative stuff like songwriting and even a live performance on a stage. You want to be there in the spirit of the good things that music does for the world, because it does a lot of good in the world and it heals people. You talk to people and they go, "Oh my God, that song saved my life!" and it's pretty miraculous what music does for people. So that's the spirit in which we proceed, going to the loud office every day, doing the rock job. n
Heart, Squeeze • Tue, March 11 at 8 pm • $65-$328 • All ages • Spokane Arena • 720 W. Mallon Ave. • spokanearena.com
