Country singer Gretchen Wilson is a study in contradictions. Case in point: the title track from her latest One of the Boys, on which she gets to the heart of the matter, distilling her hands-on-hips tough girl exterior down to surprising vulnerability. “I know I don’t act much like a lady but I still need to be somebody’s baby,” she wails in the song’s chorus. “Yeah, you might find me making too much noise, but I’m more than just one of the boys.”
Sweet and salty as the margaritas she sings about downing in Les Paul-fueled barnburners like "All Jacked Up" and “You Don’t Have to Go Home,” Wilson has written or co-written most all the tracks on her three albums, starting with her star-making debut, 2004’s Here for the Party. She calls One of the Boys her most personal disc to date, admitting that there are a couple of songs—the devastating break-up confessional “To Tell You the Truth,” for one—that she wouldn’t dare sing live for fear of crying.
Since her days slinging beer and singing her heart out in the bars of her rural Pocahontas, Illinois hometown, Wilson’s come a long way, without sacrificing any of her unruly charm. Early on, the Nashville tomboy and mom to six-year-old daughter Grace famously told her record label that, under no circumstances, could they ask her to cut her hair, lose weight, or wear a dress. They wisely agreed, and it’s Wilson’s rough-around-the-edges persona that’s made her a force to be reckoned with on the country charts and on her never-ending tours across the country.
You did The Ellen Degeneres Show yesterday. Do you get nervous being on talk shows?
I get nervous about everything, just still very nervous about all of it.
When you were a teenager, you’d throw up before getting on stage. Are you still having the same trouble?
Yes, but it doesn’t elevate to that level. Every once in awhile it does. But right before they opened the door on the Ellen show yesterday, I thought my heart was going to come out of my throat. It’s hard to look calm and smile and remember your guitar parts and remember your words, and meanwhile all you can think is, “I’m going to throw up.”
I usually stay nervous until I get out there and then three or four lines into the first song, it just all goes away and I’m very comfortable and right where I need to be. It’s just something that I’ve gotten used to. It’s just natural. I think the nerves are supposed to be there. I’ll start worrying when I don’t get nervous.
The Gibson Dove seems to be your favorite guitar these days.
Yes, it is. I have the most amazing guitars on stage with me. My guitar tech even told me that I’m the only person he knows who has a Dove as a back up; my second guitar in case something goes wrong with my first Dove is another Dove. Doves In Flight is the one that I play all the time. It’s a beautiful, beautiful piece of wood to look at, but it also just sounds warmer than any of the other guitars I have. There’s just a really warm sound to it. And it was built for me so all of the guts and stuff have been specially designed for where I play at.
You know what, I’ve had really good guitars from the get-go. I started with that customized Epiphone Redneck and I’ve even gotten prototypes from Nashville. I’m telling you my little Epiphone bus guitar that I write all my songs on, it just sounds so good. We can sit around and do a little bluegrass jam on the bus. I have to struggle to play really softly because it’ll just carry and cover up everybody else’s instrument. It’s louder than the banjo, it’s louder than the fiddle.
You’ve been playing your Les Paul more often. Do you find that the electric songs are more fun to play live?
It’s a little more rock and roll, and it’s a little tougher. Any time you see a girl rocking out with a Les Paul and singing her butt off and jamming those really crunchy, hardcore tones, I think it’s pretty sexy myself. Any girl would feel sexy with a Les Paul in her arms.
How did you first learn to play guitar?
The first rock band I played in was in the St. Louis area, and before that I’d been in a lot of bands but never had to play an instrument. I was just the chick singer. You know, I held the tambourine—pathetic. But this one band that I joined, I was taking over and filling a spot, and I had to learn guitar. A week and a half was all I had to learn a four-hour show. We played four sets back then—9 to 1 is a regular gig for a bar band—so it was a lot of tunes and a lot of hard work. I really just sat at home with the guitar and I thought my fingers were going to fall off and I threw my guitar and I cussed and I had a hell of a time with it, but if I wanted to be the front guy of this band I was going to have to learn it. I just stuck to it and I’ve had calluses on my fingers ever since.
Since you had to learn to play so quickly, did you develop a certain style?
I probably have a style, and it’s probably really bad. I know that I make chords wrong. If you look up a textbook on where you’re supposed to put your fingers, I know I do a lot of things wrong. I learned to play myself. I learned it by ear. I didn’t have any books or anybody there telling me. I know my B chord is backwards, I know that for sure. So it’s probably a really sloppy, really cheat-y kind of a style that I have but it works. I wish I could play a little softer. I play really hard. I break strings. If there are light gauge strings on there, they’re broken. I break them on the first strum. I’m really tough on guitars.
Do you practice guitar very often?
No, I don’t practice, and I don’t really listen to the radio much either, because it’s my world. It’s what I do. It’s what I have to do, so really sometimes silence is the sweetest song that there is.
Do you take your daughter Grace on tour with you?
I do sometimes. I did a lot more last year, but this year she decided she wanted to go to a regular school with all the other kids so I don’t get to just drag her along anytime I want. It’s a little selfish from my end. She likes coming out here but she’s bored with it after about a day and a half. It’s not that it’s terrible. I mean, I’ve got everything that you can imagine she’d want on this tour bus, but she is just a real regular kind of a kid and she likes to do regular kid things and being out here has gotten kind of old for her.
Luckily, I don’t stay out on the road for more than four days. I’m getting ready to change that too, though. Now that Grace is in regular school, I’m missing a little bit too much. Starting next year, I’m just going to tour all year, which I always end up doing anyway. So I’ve decided that I’m taking every other week off next year and I’ll still have plenty of gigs. I’ll still do somewhere between 78 and 85 shows next year and I’ll be home for 10 days straight every other week.
You’ve said that One of the Boys is the most personal of any of your albums so far. How so?
In the beginning I was learning to be a songwriter and I was trying to figure out the formula. As I got a little bit more into it, I became more confident. And since then I’ve really been writing my life. I’m a singer-songwriter and I write my experiences and the things that I’ve been through. The best and the worst moments of my life are the things that I put on paper. This last record really is my life as it was happening, and I’m really close to it. It’s my diary set to music.