month<\/mark> to premiere her new documentary, \u201cAnn Wilson \u2014 In My Voice.\u201d<\/p>\nRather than simple screenings around the country, Wilson is taking a more personal approach to unveiling the new film, kicking off a nine-city tour in Seattle with a May 11 screening and live Q&A session at the Neptune Theatre, where Wilson and director Barbara Hall will take audience questions.<\/p>\n
The film chronicles Wilson\u2019s journey from childhood through Heart\u2019s rise to fame and beyond, casting Wilson’s life against the backdrop of evolving American culture. Ahead of the screening and Q&A, we caught up with Wilson to discuss the new doc, her life in rock ‘n’ roll and returning to the stage with Heart last year following cancer treatment. This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n
Tell me about the impetus for the documentary. How did this project get going?<\/strong><\/p>\nWe came to the realization that no talk has ever been made about just my life. It\u2019s always me as an appendage of Heart. While that\u2019s a remarkable thing, it\u2019s not the whole story. We thought, “Let\u2019s take a picture of the rest of it and see what that\u2019s like.” And it was a lot of fun, getting it all together and going through the archives of stuff that\u2019s just me and my world.<\/p>\n
What sort of things were you going through and revisiting while trying to figure out what to include?<\/strong><\/p>\nIn my house in Seattle, I had a vault that had films and photographs and poster art \u2014 all kinds of things from all the years, starting way back in the early \u201870s. They\u2019d been stored there for the whole time I lived in that house.<\/p>\n
What was the process like working with Barbara? How much were you hands on and steering the direction of the film vs. letting her come in and execute her vision?<\/strong><\/p>\nIt was a real nice collaboration. She\u2019s a great person to work with. Really upbeat, a fine Canadian woman (laughs). She came over to the house several times and we had long interviews, got it all on film. We just talked a lot. When I started to be able to look at the rough drafts, there were things I thought could be better; those were tweaked, some were taken out. Just things that I didn\u2019t think were meaningful to the story, keeping in mind that this is not meant to be any sort of whitewash. It shows my story. The ups and the downs and the good again.<\/p>\n
Heart\u2019s career has been heavily documented over the years. Were there any aspects of your personal story that you felt hadn\u2019t been properly told or anything you wanted to set the record straight on?<\/strong><\/p>\nPretty much everything after the \u201880s. Between the \u201880s and now, I\u2019m pretty much an unknown quantity. So, this is a good way for people to get a view into what my life is like now, too. My children are grown and I live in Nashville now. I\u2019m happily married and still doing music with people I really respect.<\/p>\n
What changed for you after the \u201880s?<\/strong><\/p>\nEverything. I think emerging from the corporate world of the \u201880s was a great liberation for me creatively. I was able to write better songs. Maybe not the kind that were playing on the radio, necessarily. That\u2019s always been the case with me and Nancy and Heart. We don\u2019t necessarily write for the radio. We write and if it hits, it hits. I think that became a lot clearer after the \u201880s. We were more free to be ourselves. I made a lot of friends in Seattle during that time in the \u201890s. I became a member of the Seattle music community for a while. Very tight-knit and familylike. It was a great time to raise little kids and have them surrounded by creative people and live in a great city.<\/p>\n
How do you think you\u2019ve evolved as a songwriter over the years?<\/strong><\/p>\nI think it\u2019s a matter of taking off the blinders. Especially as a lyricist, I think it\u2019s possible to write about anything you want. You don\u2019t have to just write about love, you can write about anything. Especially nowadays when there\u2019s so much going on in the world. There\u2019s so much high emotion flying around, it\u2019s impossible not to catch some of it in songs.<\/p>\n
I understand the film presents your life in the context of evolving American culture. Part of the story of Heart\u2019s early years involves you following (Heart’s first manager)<\/mark> Michael Fisher up to Vancouver during the Vietnam War. What do you remember about how you viewed the Vietnam War and what was happening in America at that time as a young person from a military family who fell in love with someone who fled to Canada to evade the draft?<\/strong><\/p>\nI grew up in a military family and I really honored and respected what my father did, the two wars he\u2019d been in in the Pacific and in Korea. But when the Vietnam War came along, he wasn\u2019t having any of it. He\u2019d already been there twice and had been wounded both times. So, when it came time for him to be called to go to Vietnam, he tried to get information about what was going on and it was classified even to him. He couldn\u2019t find out anything. He threw up his hands and went, \u201cThis is not for me. This is a dirty war.\u201d And he retired.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Him having done that really showed me that it\u2019s more about what you feel than any kind of patriotism. When I met Michael Fisher, I saw his situation was not unlike my father\u2019s, except he\u2019d never been to war. So, I felt my own feelings about it that had more to do with my father than Michael. Dirty war.<\/p>\n
Did your upbringing in a military family inform how you approached your music career?<\/strong><\/p>\nOnly insofar as we were always traveling. In the family, we were never anywhere for more than a couple years, so the idea of pulling up stakes and moving on was pretty natural for me and Nancy.<\/p>\n
You mentioned Seattle in the \u201890s being a great place to raise your kids. What was it like to settle down a bit after the \u201870s and \u201880s and raise a family of your own?<\/strong><\/p>\nI remember a few really beautiful, calm summer evenings in Seattle. I lived on Capitol Hill then. Just going out and grilling something in the backyard and listening to the neighborhoods and feeling really at peace. I don\u2019t know if Seattle\u2019s like that now, but it was then.<\/p>\n
As your family grew, what was it like balancing life on the road and being present for your family?<\/strong><\/p>\nWhen the kids were small enough, they went with me on the road. We\u2019d take them on the bus and make sure they had a safe bunk to sleep in. I\u2019d try to plan the tours so they were only in the summer when the kids were out of school, so we could all be together.<\/p>\n
When you started out in the \u201870s, as women, you were pioneers in the hard rock world and dealt with your share of misogyny in the music industry. There\u2019s still progress to be made on that front, but was there ever a period where you felt things started to improve or the culture started to shift?<\/strong><\/p>\nDefinitely, yes. And that\u2019s now. It started really shifting, I don\u2019t know, five years ago, in a really dramatic way. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s even that big of a deal anymore. I think if somebody looks at you and goes, \u201cOh wow, you\u2019re a woman. You\u2019re in a rock band.\u201d You just kind of go, \u201cYeah, and? So what?\u201d There are so many women in bands now and that\u2019s how it should be. People always used to ask, \u201cWhat\u2019s it like being a woman in rock?\u201d And of course, the answer is it\u2019s just like being a man in rock. There\u2019s no difference.<\/p>\n
Are there any younger artists you\u2019re really into or that you see any kindred spirit with?<\/strong><\/p>\nI like Lola Young. I think she\u2019s got something extra. She\u2019s not doing what every other young woman her age is doing. She\u2019s out there just tearing it up and I think that\u2019s amazing.<\/p>\n
Last year, you got back on the road with Heart for the first time since undergoing chemotherapy. What was it like playing those first shows back?<\/strong><\/p>\nIt was hard, because chemotherapy really takes a lot out of your energy. It\u2019s hard to even want to get out of bed some days, but I didn’t attempt to go onstage until I was ready. And that meant I went onstage in a wheelchair the first few weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I went out, it took something to do that \u2014 to take off the wig and go, \u201cI\u2019m just going to be the person I am right now after chemotherapy. I can sing great, but I don\u2019t look like I looked in the pictures. I have to go out and just do this to be myself.\u201d So, I did. And it was really something, because I went out onstage and the minute people saw me, they just opened up. It was the most gratifying moment after what I\u2019d just been through to see people going, \u201cWow. We accept you. We know who you are. You\u2019re not just a cancer, you\u2019re you.\u201d That was beautiful.<\/p>\n
Was it nerve-wracking the first time, knowing you were going to be performing in a wheelchair?<\/strong><\/p>\nNah. I don\u2019t think it was nerve-wracking, because the songs are what really set me free.<\/p>\n
Some of the songs you\u2019ve been singing for decades. As you\u2019ve grown as a person, have any changed meaning for you or have you come to view any in a different way?<\/strong><\/p>\nOh, of course. Some of them were written so long ago that it\u2019s really hard to access the person that wrote that song. \u201cMagic Man\u201d is a good example. That was the first song that I ever wrote for the first Heart album. When we do that song, it\u2019s like, \u201cWho was that person again that wrote that song?\u201d She was 23. It\u2019s a whole different thing. But it\u2019s possible. You can re-create those songs. Maybe even a little bit better, in terms of singing them a little wiser.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last seen slaying\u00a0Climate Pledge Arena with Heart in November, Seattle rock hero Ann Wilson comes home this month to premiere her new documentary, \u201cAnn Wilson \u2014 In My Voice.\u201d Rather than simple screenings around the country, Wilson is taking a more personal approach to unveiling the new film, kicking off a nine-city tour in Seattle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2401797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-2401796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Hearts-Ann-Wilson-talks-new-documentary-touring-after-chemotherapy.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2401796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2401798,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401796\/revisions\/2401798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2401797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2401796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2401796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2401796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}