Gretchen Wilson broke the Nashville mold for female country singers with her breakthrough single Redneck Woman.
By MARTY CLEAR
Published October 21, 2004
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“I realized there probably wasn’t anyone else who’d want to sing it,” Gretchen Wilson said of her hit Redneck Woman.
When Gretchen Wilson wrote Redneck Woman, she had no idea it would become an anthem for working-class women.
It wasn't until after she had finished the paean to the simple life that Wilson, 31, who was writing songs for others, gave any thought to recording it.
"I'd been writing songs with John Rich (of the country duo Big & Rich) and one day he convinced me it was okay to write a song about myself," Wilson said. "I didn't have to think about what Martina or Jo Dee Messina would want to say, or might not want to say."
She liked the song, but there was a problem. Contemporary country singers who fit Nashville's glamorous mold wanted a more sophisticated message than the tobacco-chewing Midwesterner delivered.
"I realized there probably wasn't anyone else who'd want to sing it," Wilson said. "So I said, "Well, I'd better get a record deal.' "
Released in May, Redneck Woman was the first country single by a solo woman singer to get to No. 1 in more than two years, and got there faster than any single in the past decade. The album it's on, Here for the Party, entered the country charts at No. 1, and the pop charts at No. 2, making Wilson the latest evidence that country music fans want to get back to basics.
Wilson came to Nashville in 1996 from Pocahontas. Ill., population 727, where she grew up poor, leaving school at 14. "It's about 45 miles from St. Louis, but you'd never know it," she said. "Nobody from Pocahontas ever went to St. Louis. That was the big city."
(Redneck Woman is) "not just about me, but my mom and my grandmother and probably every other woman in Pocahontas," Wilson said in a phone interview from her tour bus, hours before she was to share a Virginia bill with Brooks & Dunn and Montgomery Gentry.
Wilson, who had sung in several country and rock bands in the St. Louis area since leaving home, went to Nashville in 1996 chasing stardom. She found mere success.
"By 1999 I was making a good living as a demo singer," she said. "I didn't have a boss, I was taking care of my daughter, I was paying the bills and I was working in the music industry. I felt like I had already made it in Nashville."
She was writing on the side when she and Rich penned the song that exalted the sometimes denigrated rural lifestyle. Sony Music Nashville took a chance on it, and gave the record to radio stations several months before its release date, figuring they'd generate some buzz before its scheduled release.
The song became a smash. Wilson had to write more songs to complete her first album, Here for the Party, and then hit the road. The disc has gone multiplatinum, and Wilson is nominated for five Country Music Association awards. (The ceremony is Nov. 9.)
She's performed all over the world, to crowds 10 times the size of her hometown. On Swedish television, she had to explain what a redneck was to an interviewer who barely spoke English.
The pace shows no sign of letting up.
"Sorry I'm out of breath," she says over the phone. "I'm picking up my daughter's toys while I'm talking to you. I've got to get this place straightened up. I've got to make the bed."
So she's the hottest artist in country music, with a personal assistant, an entourage and millions of fans. But she's still a single mom with a 4-year-old daughter to raise. She still has to tend to the housework, even if the "house" is a tour bus instead of a trailer.
Is she still a redneck woman? "I sure am," she says with a mix of pride and exhaustion. "I sure am."
PREVIEW:
Gretchen Wilson performs with Brooks & Dunn and Montgomery Gentry at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Ford Amphitheatre in Tampa. Reserved seats are $44.75 plus service charge; general admission lawn seats are $24.75 plus service charge. Call (813) 740-2446.
