This page keeps track of what Ann & Nancy Wilson say about Heart’s hiatus.
*newest additions are placed at the top of the page*
Updated March 1st 2025: Marking the start of Heart’s Royal Flush Tour 2025, Ann but mostly Nancy has hit the circuit to promote their return. People Magazine though had them both to fire questions at. Here’s some quotes:
Ann: “I’m really excited about it actually,” Wilson, 74, tells PEOPLE in an interview just days before heading back out on Heart’s 24-date Royal Flush Tour 2025, kicking off Friday, Feb. 28 in Las Vegas. “I feel really strong. I’ve been preparing and all that, and I’m healthy. I’m clear. I’m a little nervous because I haven’t done it in a year, but I’m there.” […] “I’ve come from a really far away place to get up to the strength and energy you need to do it,” explains Ann about getting back on the road on this year’s tour, which will conclude on April 16 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. “I’m just really curious to see what I feel like when I walk out there. I think it’s just going to be great. I feel really empowered right now.”
Nancy: “The songs don’t seem to age, but it’s like, damn it, you have to age,” says Nancy, who “works out and strengthens” to prepare her mind and body for performing onstage. “There’s more of a clock on things now. I mean, there’s a lot of classic rock bands that are folding up, so we’re kind of loud and proud and happy to just prove that we are here. We’ve always proved it. We’re good at it. We do it with flatter shoes these days, but we still do it.” But how long they will do it, no one knows. “There’s no looking glass and there’s no mirror ball,” concludes Nancy. “Life’s always going to hand you what it hands you and take you down the trail that it takes you, with all the best of intentions and all the best energy and intuition and intention. We go forward and we trust that it’s going to be okay as much as we can, but there’s all kinds of boogeyman coming out of every doorway right now. Hopefully this upcoming tour is just going to be a wildly jubilant celebration.”
And The Los Angeles Times got to speak to them as well:
Beyond your commitment to the music, last year’s tour seemed like a way for the two of you to reconnect after a period of turmoil.
Nancy: Being onstage with each other, no matter what grief or loss or challenge we’re going through emotionally as sisters — it’s a healing process.
Ann: When you get a cut or a scrape, it doesn’t just heal overnight. It takes maybe a couple of weeks to come back to its new form. I think every time we go onstage together, we get a little bit farther back to the inside jokes and the language we developed through our childhoods. We came up together side by side — learned how to play guitar together and how to sing by sharing a bedroom in our parents’ house and just doing nothing but that all day long. It’s a lot to come back to.
Could that work of reconciliation continue after the tour was interrupted?
Ann: The stage is where most of the healing takes place. It’s a safe place for us to be.
You both spoke candidly to Rolling Stone about the backstage incident in 2016. A lot of celebrities would avoid talking about it.
Ann: I think that people who love Heart and care about Nancy and I deserve the truth.
Nancy: We didn’t come from a Hollywood-style upbringing.
Updated January 8th 2025: Nancy (the following can be heard in the 47th minute):
“Yeah we’re going back. Ann’s health is really strong, no more chemo, no more immune infusions. So she’s bored already trying to get back out on the stage which she lives to do, which we really love doing. It’s so great. The tour was going like gangbusters when we had to postpone and so at the end of February we’re gonna be back out for about 18 shows and we’re scheduling more of what we started as we speak. So hopefully by the end of the week or soon we can get the announcement out for the rest of what we started last year. In the new year we just gonna take no prisoners and get up and rock our butts off”.
Updated August 26th 2024: Ultimate Classic Rock is slowly releasing tidbits of a recent interview with Nancy; with her saying the soon to be announced tour dates are rescheduled for February 2025 and a tidbit with Nancy saying that…
“We’re actually in talks about an acoustic album, while we’re waiting to go back out on the tour, which I think it’d be just a perfect use of our time,” she confessed. “Because me and the band guys could put these acoustic Heart songs together in ways that are kind of an unexpected way of doing [and] hearing Heart songs, fresh again.” Nancy noted that the band “could finish that before we go back out on the road.”
Updated July 6th 2024: With Ann’s troubling health related news, Heart rests on cinder blocks for the rest of 2024, which is totally understandable. As Heartmongers await announcements about the 2025 rescheduling of the postponed tour dates, all one can do is wish Ann all the strength and love from family, friends and fans on her road to full recovery.
Updated May 23rd 2024: Since Ann & Nancy -after the nineties- took Heart back on the road and back into the studio in 2002 Pollstar.com has clocked them at grossing more than 101 million dollars in 564 headlining dates. This 2024 tour will add tens of millions seeing the size of the venues this time around.
Updated May 22nd 2024: Triblive.com: As for what the future holds, Ann Wilson could see new Heart music sometime down the road.
“I would imagine so. I think so. We’ve only just recently gotten into this tour, so the whole idea in doing it was to see how it worked and see how it feels and see if we get ideas for new songs,” she said. “And because these Tripsitter guys that are in the band now are excellent songwriters and they have great musical ideas, and Nancy and I are both, well, especially me, I’m a lyricist, so I’m always looking for great musical ideas. I think that’ll happen.”
Updated May 17th 2024: Right on the tail of the new Rolling Stone article, the Washington Post has published an article, that provides us with some pretty depressing insights about Heart’s last 8 years. However, we can also read that the eye of the storm, Ann & Nancy, is calm in 2024 and that connection that we see between them on stage is real. Here are some of the most notable parts:
The [2016] tour sputtered on, but after that there would be separate dressing rooms, separate makeup artists, separate managers, separate camps. The distance even became formalized by contract into what they called “sanctuary zones.” When they were offstage, Ann’s husband and manager were not to step into Nancy’s space. Nancy’s husband and manager were barred from venturing into Ann’s. And yet last month, there were Nancy and Ann, sitting comfortably in Ann’s dressing room at Tampa’s Amalie Arena, talking about music until it was time for the buses to roll out. [..] On paper, the sanctuary zones were still in effect. The Wilson sisters had simply decided to ignore them.
“Unnecessary,” said Ann.
“It was unnecessary,” echoed Nancy. “To have a camp over here, a camp over there.”
[…] As the new tour got underway last month, Ann’s manager, Dave Frey, was talking up a “big offer” on the table to reunite the old bandmates. The Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington state wanted the classic 1975 lineup for a concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of Heart’s debut album, “Dreamboat Annie.” [..]
“And Ann was like, ‘If we’re going in the way-back machine, let’s do it,’” Frey said. “Six-way split. Everybody has to say yes or it doesn’t happen. Let’s shoot a documentary. Let’s make it cool. And there’s some edge to it.”
He paused. “But I don’t think Nancy’s going to join,” he said. “So the next question is, we can’t call it Heart because Nancy owns half the company. So it would have to be, you know, ‘50 years of “Dreamboat Annie” featuring Ann Wilson, Steve Fossen, Roger Fisher, Derosier, etc.’”Asked about a Wilsher reunion, Ann sounded less than thrilled.
“The thing that the fans don’t ever consider is the unpleasantness of how the relationships within the band function,” she said during a Nashville recording session. “If the band split up, there was a reason for that.”
Nancy, catching wind of the Gorge offer for the first time in a conversation with this reporter, was more blunt.
“I don’t think you could pay me enough,” she said. “It’s … what’s the word? It’s icky.”
[…] “This is a person who is free,” Ann said of Wetter. “It doesn’t matter how many people say, ‘Hey, buddy, come on, you better rein it in.’ He believes the ultimate act of friendship and love is to tell the unvarnished, transparent truth, always. “And that’s nice,” she added. “But, you know, it isn’t always the most comfortable.” A few months after they were married, the family gathered for Thanksgiving. Nancy and her second husband, Geoff Bywater, then the head of music for Fox Television, were there, along with Nancy’s teenagers. One of the boys made a joke about karate-kicking a girl at school who annoyed him. Wetter didn’t like it. “He reached across the table and he grabbed a hold of him and went, ‘You do that, and you’ll be acting like a little bitch,’” Ann recalled. “And those are words that never get said at the Wilson table.”
Many in the Wilsons’ circle were alarmed. “That’s where I wrote him off forever,” said Sue Ennis, a childhood friend and one of their most valued songwriting partners. The tour bus incident came nine months later. […] They disagree on how it was handled and what went down. […] Ann’s management team issued a statement to The Washington Post suggesting that Wetter’s behavior could be linked to a loss of blood flow to his brain after a carotid artery suffered a blockage and that with surgery and therapy, his “medically diagnosed anxiety and rage episodes are more controllable.” But in a recent Zoom interview, Wetter sounded unrepentant. He discussed his abusive childhood home and barrage of recent health issues. Yet he continued to gripe about Nancy’s family and seemed unconcerned about how the tour bus incident affected the Wilson clan. “I don’t want to be a part of manipulating some fairy tale relationship or being a part of it,” he said. “If they want to talk to each other, they totally can.”
[…] In early March, Nancy was sitting in the dining room of her home north of San Francisco, talking about the last few “super-scarring” years. She missed her sister and was convinced that Wetter had moved them to Florida to isolate her. For a time, they barely spoke. But they had begun to text again. She had rebuffed Frey’s efforts to revive Heart in 2021. What even was Heart at that point? The band that Nancy loved touring with in 2019, or the new group of Nashville players that Ann had bonded with? Unable to agree, they turned to their own projects and separate tours. Was there any chance that this new Heart tour could work?
“I think it boils down to who Ann wants her village to be,” said Nancy. “Where’s her comfort zone?
She recognized by now that her comfort zone was different. That the kind of swaggering personalities with whom Ann found ease — her husband, her manager Frey — triggered bad memories for Nancy, a throwback to the power dynamics and control battles of their Wilsher days. Three thousand miles away, Ann nursed her own wounds. She felt abandoned. Why didn’t anyone come to visit her in Florida? She missed the company of her sister and their old collaborator Ennis. She understood that it would not be easy for them to come stay in Wetter’s home.
But “we could get a hotel for the afternoon of songwriting or whatever,” she said. “I would like to hang out and laugh with them, for sure.”
Ultimately, though, Nancy relented. “I love being in the band Heart,” she explained. “It’s the thing me and Ann built together. And it’s a beautiful machine. A big metal horse, that gets a lot of attention. Ann Wilson or Nancy Wilson separate — not nearly as many people are interested or come out to see that, because it’s not Heart. So, I mean, the chance to do Heart again, despite, you know, whatever the static on the outskirts, the periphery of it all, I don’t care about. I just want to do the Heart thing.”
[…] Nancy’s husband lingered in her dressing room until it was time to catch Cheap Trick’s opening set. Frey wasn’t there — Ann had suggested he work from home to reduce backstage tensions — but Nancy’s manager wasn’t there either. Wetter hung back on Ann’s tour bus but came out to watch the show from the soundboard.
“Our family was a really big togetherness family,” Nancy had mused back in California. “But maybe now we have to compartmentalize our actual today family, in a different way, and concentrate on the eye of the hurricane, where it’s peaceful and creative. Let the politics fly around and the cows fly through the air.”
The sisters emerged from their respective dressing rooms a few minutes before showtime to sit together in a small tent backstage. Then the lights went down. […] And when it is over, the two sisters sit together until nearly midnight, laughing about how much better this has gone than they expected and how silly those sanctuary zones were. Even though they don’t say it, they have rediscovered the real sanctuary.
Updated May 15th 2024: Ann & Nancy were interviewed separately by Rolling Stone. Remember that bombshell of an article after the incident? Here’s some excerpts from the new article:
“We just got really tired of not playing together, and we both wanted to do a Heart tour,” Ann, 73, tells me. “So then there is this question hanging in the air: Can Heart be Heart without Ann or can Heart be Heart without Nancy? It never could.” […] “We just went, ‘Well, let’s do what we have to do,’” Ann continues. “Our discomforts of the past, at least from my perspective, have really been ironed out.” […] “Dean is still that Zen warrior,” she tells. “He’s a meditator and a napper. Sometimes, you can’t tell the difference.” [..] Looking back on the 2016 incident that came between them, Ann wishes it was handled differently. “I would have gotten us all together in a room that night after the event, and tried to talk it out as a family, rather than the police being called and Dean being hauled off to jail,” she says. “When he sees kids jumping around, acting like fools, and letting dogs out into an active highway, he spanks them. That’s just the way he is.” [..] “We were babies together,” Ann says. “We were kids together. We learned how to play guitars together. All through the Seventies and Eighties with Heart, in all those different eras. So that’s one little dark spot that seems to be fading, and I’m really glad about it.” […] Choosing a backing band was a point of contention for the sisters. Ann wanted Tripsitter, while Nancy wanted her own solo band. (“We just haggled until I said, ‘It has to be my guys or else I won’t do it,’” Ann told me.) In the end, they settled on Ann’s band.
[..] Nancy has yet to see Wetter face to face when we talk, but she says she’s looking forward to saying hello. As for doing things differently, she says she did what was best for her children. “Had I tried to dodge it, I could have lost my custody of my kids,” she says. “I could not have done that, legally. The venue reported it, so it was on record. I had to follow the letter of the law in the circumstance. Because I could have gotten in big trouble if I did not. It was diminished to a misdemeanor — that’s all I could do.” (Responding to this, Ann says, “That’s up for interpretation.”) [..] “When we’re together, it’s the eye of the hurricane — the calm center around which all the drama swirls,” Nancy adds. “We’ve always been soulmates. I’ve always loved her, understood her, sometimes maybe more than she understands herself. But at the same time, she knows me like nobody else. It’s that thing when you’re on a stage with your sister in a big rock show.”
Updated April 28th 2024: In an interview with Nancy & Ann at Billboard, the ladies give some hopeful news about possible new Heart music and shows:
“The thing that we really hope to achieve is to maybe write some more stuff together,” Ann tells Billboard. She adds, however, “We don’t have plans for that right now. We don’t really plan too far in the future; we’re not calculating like that. We’re just gonna do this tour and see what comes. But I think if a song comes out of a situation, it’ll be a real good one, ’cause it’ll be authentic. It’s just a matter of me and Nancy getting our heads around that.”. There is, however, one new song that Heart’s been working on — “Roll the Dice,” written with longtime collaborator and Lovemongers groupmate Sue Ennis with an eye toward including it in the Royal Flush Tour shows that begin April 20 in Greenville, S.C. Ann says it’s still “a work in process,” ..
…which Nancy began when she and Ennis got together “just for songwriting purposes. A lot of times we text with each other and we get on concept ideas and title ideas and lyric ideas. When she finally came to visit me at my house in northern California, we spent about a week together, and we actually recorded some demos.” There are no plans for “Roll the Dice” yet beyond playing it at shows, but Nancy says she’s also been trolling through the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted group’s vaults, listening to unreleased material with the thought of releasing some of that in the near future, too. “There’s a couple unfinished things I’d like to finish off with Ann and Sue,” she says. “There’s one really, really cool song called ‘Sweet Deceiver,’ but the words were never right, so we never recorded it properly. I think I might want to finish that song; I’ve been trying to think of new chorus lyrics ever since I heard the demo. I would love to write some new stuff, too. “If we have a song or two that comes out of Heart, that would be really great. These days, it’s kind of like one song at a time, but you can still do a whole album, which is cool. I love albums,” she adds. “When I can put on an album in its entirety, in the sequence it was intended, that’s the best to me. The new Kacey Musgraves [Deeper Well] is really great. I love the Post Malone album, Austin. Taylor Swift’s stuff is amazing. So we’ll see.”
“We’re talking. We’re fine together. We just felt it, so why not?” Ann says. “The common ground is that we both want it to be excellent and we both want it to be absolutely Heart. We just basically put it together and said, ‘Let’s go!’”
Nancy — who performed with her own Nancy Wilson’s Heart during 2022 and 2023 — adds that “there’s so many things, circumstantially, since 2019 … a lot of it’s just family drama and unavoidable, and just other stuff people wanted to do besides Heart. So we were off doing our own things for a little while, and there was also this little interruption called the pandemic. “And, y’know, I just turned the big 7-0 [on March 16], so it’s like, ‘Whoa … If I ever want to get a chance to do this amazingly fun thing one more time, now is the time.’” That said, Nancy, for one, would not mind if Heart’s resumption lasts an even longer time than is currently planned. “I think this will carry us at least through the year, if not beyond. My fingers are crossed,” she says. “There’s no telling if it’ll run like a well-oiled machine, but I think once we get started it’ll go smooth and steady and rock like the well-oiled machine it knows how to be, and that’s the fun part. The shows can be so elating and so transcendent, and the electric energy is unbelievable. So that’s what we’re here for. “We’ve built this train,” she adds. “We’ve got the wheels on and we’re putting it on the track, and we’ll see how fast things thing can go — and how far it can go.”
Updated March 29th 2024: And Ann says in Alex Baldwin’s podcast:
Ann: It was difficult because we’ve always been tight. We never allowed other people to come into our relationship until then, and then we had we had other people saying, well, she says this, and she says that, You know, so it got to be a little bit of a drama. Things have really straightened themselves out now.
Yeah, it’s feeling more and more righteous all the time because she’s been places too, so she has to soften up too. It’s not just me, right, of course, we both have to soften back into our relationship together.
Updated March 20th 2024: Nancy says in Alec Baldwin’s podcast:
Nancy: “It was really cool. I kind of keep saying this about it because we’re gonna go on a big tour starting in April, a world tour actually, and we just did a few shows around. On New Year’s Eve, we played in Seattle. It was a hometown you know, kids, kind of victory lap and it felt so it feels so good to be on a stage with her because we have a shorthand, we have each other’s secret code, secret language that we speak, and we know each other so well. You don’t even have to say anything. You just see their face and you go, oh, okay, oh gotcha. It’s so natural. It’s you know, everything else that swirls around the camp of getting a Heart, the big metal machine of Heart started up again, is way more complicated than the actual nucleus, the center, the eye of the hurricane itself, which is me and Ann. [..] It is true that there’s a perception about Heart that only really exists when the two of us are together. That is what Heart is.
Updated February 14th 2024: On this special day -a day that was the release date for many Heart studio albums – I have to report about an email sent out by Ann yesterday. She took the special effort to address rumors of new Heart music:
Ann: I’ve seen narratives floating around in the press that Heart is planning to record but just so you all know, that is not the case at this time. Right now we are focused on our exciting world tour! […] We’re proud of this record [Another Door]. So much so, in fact, that we (Ann Wilson & Tripsitter) are currently getting sketches together for another record later on!
BELOW THE UPDATES LEADING UP TO THE 2023/2024 HEART TOUR
Updated December 27th 2023: Tonight Heart will play for the first time since October 13th 2019. They will play the Yaamava’ Theater in Highland CA. Meanwhile the band has confirmed on their site or through social media they will be playing dates in the Summer of 2024. Leading up to tonight’s show (as part of a three date mini tour) Nancy was asked about their plans: Ahead of rehearsals in Nashville, Tenn., where Ann’s solo band Tripsitter is based, the Wilson sisters had been swapping set list ideas.
“We’re going to do, of course, the familiar songs that people wanna hear,” Nancy says. “But we’re also digging a little deeper into some of the hardcore, fan-favorite deep cuts. Gonna break out the mandolin for this one, you know what I mean? … We’re [likely] gonna throw out a couple of new things, one Ann has off her cool new album called ‘Another Door’ and another that I just wrote recently. […] I’m just really excited about working with Ann again. We’ve been texting back and forth a lot — “What about this song? What if we did that song?” It’s a really beautiful legacy to dive back into and look around and see over the four decades-plus that we’ve managed to do some pretty awesome, artistic musical things.[…] 2023 was actually [the anniversary of] where Ann joined in the band, so it was going to be an ANNiversary, for Ann. So, 2025 will be the [50th] anniversary of “Dreamboat Annie,” the first album we released in 1975. But as far as demarcating and delineating how old we are [laughs], I don’t think it’s the coolest way to go. It’s just not my cup of tea to say, “50 years later, we can still do the kick!” […] I think it’s proof of the puddin’, as they say, that we survive. We bounce, we float. The survival of it all was largely due to a wicked sense of humor and just the passion and the desire to do music. Music is a real healing power, and right now, need I say, the world needs it a lot. […] Yeah. We’ve done a couple (Heart) things in the can and I’ve also worked along with Sue Ennis, who did a lot of Heart songwriting with me and Ann in the past. I’ve got a bunch of new stuff with Sue that I’ve been working on. One thing that really turned out great is a new song called “A Million Goodbyes.” It’s like a story of people agreeing to move on with their lives after they’ve said a million goodbyes already. I went to Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie because I really love his voice. It’s a conversational kind of voice. He doesn’t sing with like an ego-accented voice, and he [sang] it with me. It’ll come out early in the year. He’s not going to be around for New Year’s Eve, because I was, like, “Oh, will you come sing it with me?!” But he’s unfortunately not going to be in town. […] There’s been a lot of emotionally challenging aspects to having a family that’s in a band together. It’s really hard to compartmentalize some of those things and not to be defensive or to be disruptive inside the family aspect of things when you’re trying to do business in a career setting. So, the family part and the career part can oftentimes derail pretty easily. That’s where you kinda have to think bigger and you have to be a bigger human around it all and learn how to be really forgiving and take the high road. […] For me personally, I’ve really had to take the high road a lot in the last decade or so. But all of the emotional struggle that it takes to compartmentalize between the family and the business is worth it. Because then you get to go out and be larger than life on a big rock stage and make music that makes people happy. It makes you happy. […] The first question a lot of people have always asked either of us, me or Ann, has been “Do you guys fight?” Like sibling rivalry. They’re hoping that we say yes. At one point, we even thought about staging a fight just to satisfy the, what is now like, the haters on social media — like everybody has to take sides all the time. Everybody has to be in opposite camps, which is such [expletive] to begin with, don’t get me started on that. But in my case, having Ann as my sister and having done music with her since I was born basically, it’s a good thing.”
Pictured above: Ann & Nancy finish their last song on their last show as “Heart” to date in St. Paul on October 13th 2019. Click here for the full show.
Updated December 7th 2023: The Toronto date has been confirmed along with two other dates! Heart will tour in 2024!
Updated December 6th 2023: The Hell Fest date might still be in the cards (but just not officially announced yet) as Ernesto alerted me about signs concerning another 2024 Heart show, as of now unconfirmed.
But Heart has confirmed this date;
Updated November 29th 2023:
Below the now outdated news. In the meantime Heart has been removed from the line-up.
——
SHOCK announcement yesterday evening that Heart will be playing in France for the first time since 1976. The band will appear on June 30th 2024 at HellFest, located in Clisson. Heart has not played the European mainland since 2004.
This website will monitor the announcements very closely for other festivals. This might take a while, as the HellFest tourdate may very well be the 4th tourdate, that Nancy mentioned yesterday (see below). It appears HellFest is closely related to Livenation. This company has a string of festivals across Europe and access to many venues.
Updated November 28th 2023: Ann said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET):
“I’ve been on tour with TRIPSITTER since June in the States and Canada. And we have one more leg to do in December before we turn things over to HEART again.”
Asked if the three shows HEART is scheduled to play at the end of the year — December 27 in Highland, California; December 28 in Palm Desert, California; and December 31 in Seattle, Washington — are the only gigs she is planning to do with her sister, HEART guitarist Nancy Wilson, Ann said:
“Well, we don’t know yet. We’re gonna see how it works with the HEART thing, whether it feels like a level up. If it does feel like a level up, then we’ll keep doing it. But that’s what it has to be. It can’t just slide down into jukebox time… It’s gotta be real. No going through the motions. No phoning it in. No just getting on some kind of circuit just to take people’s money and play the old songs again and again and again. No, we’re gonna make it cool, really make it cool.”
About the three Heart shows, Nancy says on this podcast:
“We got four actually. We’ve got our fingers crossed for a big world tour coming up. It looks pretty good for a world tour for Heart starting in the Spring. So I can’t broadcast it exactly yet but on your podcast I’ll just tell you. Nobody will know” “We were talking about Madison Square”
Updated October 30th 2023: Well even this news comes out of nowhere!! What’s happening?!
Updated October 27th 2023: Just hours before the Seattle concert announcement Ann was interviewed by Eddie Trunk on Sirius XM: Eddie asked Ann about her plans:
Ann: We’re gonna do one more leg this year in December [with Tripsitter] and then… I’m not at liberty to discuss further plans at this time. Sorry.
Eddie: Can you tell the audience if there are any future plans for Heart? Is Heart still a band?
Ann: I can say that Heart fans have a reason to feel optimistic.
Eddie: Oh well, that’s encouraging!
Ann: Yeah.
Eddie: That’s all you can say though?
Ann: Yeah, I really can’t for legal reasons. You know.
Eddie: Ok, But you and Nancy are cool and there’s hope to do things again?
Ann: Oh we’re totally cool we’re totally cool yeah.
Updated October 24th 2023
Truly historic announcement just now. More news to follow. As Nancy posted this as well it’ll be with both sisters.
Updated October 11th 2023:
Not billed as a Heart show, but for 5 minutes it sure was one! At least in my book.
Ann on October 10th 2023: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have an answer to a question with us tonight. A very very good friend… more than a friend…. what… bring her out! come on!”
Updated June 25th 2023: Ann was interviewed for the podcast Totally 80s (other guest was Terri Nunn of Berlin!) and here’s what Ann has to say (Thanx to Tommonger): “Well, I am working on a new album. I’m still in the studio writing. I think Nancy’s gonna come and play and be part of that. […] It’s just peergroup pressure I think hahaha. And just because there is lots of good song ideas coming up. And she’s got some and I’ve got some and we’re just gonna see how it goes. [Asked if it’s Nancy guesting on an Ann album or for Heart] I think we’re seeing, it is by the song. So if it’s a song that is right for Heart then it’ll be on a Heart record you know. The songs tell you what to do.”
Updated June 10th 2023: Nancy was interviewed this week on WBAB radio and this was transcribed by Consequence.net:
“I think right now I’ve been working on ‘Tomboy’ (which sees her covering songs originally written by men.) the most because I love the title, for one thing; it’s almost like boygenius or something,” she explained “But I’ve got a bunch of new ideas for songs. But I’ve also been writing new music with Ann, too. So it’s a real creative time. I think being on [my] tour right now, when I get home, I’m gonna really dig into the other projects, including finishing some new material with Ann. So, it’s really a good time to be creative. And I’ve got a new studio in my house, and so I can’t wait to sort of run tape on stuff.” She continued, “I’ve also worked a bit with Sue Ennis, who used to work a lot with me and Ann for Heart music. And so I have some lyrics mainly that I worked on with Sue and took to Ann. And there’s a couple of things that I’m really excited about. Very cool. Like stuff that you wouldn’t have heard us do in the ’80s. [It’s] closer to what you would have heard us originally do in the ’70s, late ’70s. So it’s really fun. It’s just exciting and inspiring.” […] You know it’s really been a really nice kind of rediscovery of our relationship working on music together again, so yeah I’m really happy about that too. Yep.”
Updated June 8th 2023: iHeart feels confident enough to publish this article on a 2024 tour “Looks like the Wilson sisters will push their animosities aside, at least to be onstage together, and will hit the road as the band Heart for the first time in years. It’s the 50th anniversary of the founding of the band, which Ann helped form in 1973 and her sister, Nancy, joined the next year.”
I haven’t seen any new quotes from A&N about a 2024 tour and the quotes below aren’t enough to bring such news.
[the article has been removed by iHeart]
Updated April 30th 2023: In this lengthy and fun Youtube interview taped on March 16th 2023 Nancy mentions (38th minute) her hopes for 2024 Heart World tour: “There is talk of more Heart work coming next year, so we’re really like [Nancy crosses fingers on both hands]. That’ll be fun to do a world tour next year.”
Updated April 13th 2023: In this podcast Ann reveals: Nancy is coming to the studio to do a little writing with Ann! She’ll see how that goes And potentially -depending how it goes in the studio- they could perform live together again. (48th minute)
Updated April 3rd 2023: Nancy is asked: So you did mention that there might be some sort of tour? Did you hint at that or am I making that up and was it wishful thinking? Nancy: “Well everybody’s been talking and that’s what everybody’s been saying so I’m gonna say I’m ready to keep talking about it, cos it should be time for that I think. At least one more big world tour would be really meaningful for sure.” […] “And some other countries that we haven’t been to forever. I really wanna go to London again. We did the Royal Albert Hall one time. It was so great. And you know just different places around the world, you know Canada loves us. It’d just be great to do one more big one. Maybe not even call it the last time or nobody would ever believe if we said it was the last time.“
Updated March 25th 2023: In an interview with a local station Nancy is asked about any new Heart material and she mentions she has two songs, one in particular that she did with Ryan Waters: Ann’s gonna love that one. She mentions she and Ann have been talking about a tour next year (2024) and that they need a new song, a calling card. She thinks that people kinda ran with the whole feud thing. They’re still the two sisters anyway. It’s called DNA. Things are really shaping up, according to Nancy.
This interview can be listened to for a very limited time. In the player: select March 24th 3:30 PM or if you want to be as close as possible to the stuff mentioned above; select 3:45 PM. Now, depending on your time zone, the player will show your time! So not necessarily 3:30 PM etc. For instance: in The Netherlands (where I am) I had to select 23:30 or 23:45.
If this is all too complex: go here and listen for the entire hour. Nancy is interviewed not long after the Heart song “White Lightning and Wine”. I first did this but then saw I could select to start at 15 minute intervals in the actual player. So if you can: select “30” in the player and you should drop right into “White Lightning and Wine” or select “45” and you should hear a woman asking about Heart being a woman-led rockband.
Updated March 18th 2023:
Updated March 13th 2023: Following up on the earlier post: Nancy has been announced for a September Puyallup date as Nancy Wilson’s Heart. This seals the deal for this year, despite Nancy’s social media reaching out to Ann.
Updated February 16th 2023: With the announcement of a July “Ann Wilson of Heart and the Amazing Dawgs” US show, and an unconfirmed one for August, it is not very likely 2023 will see an official Heart show, featuring both sisters. Unless this 50th anniversary thing pops up after all.
Updated February 5th 2023: On the Grammy red carpet Nancy was interviewed by Billboard and Nancy said that she and her sister are working on music for her band. Now, unless she is referring to Lynn and Nancy Wilson’s Heart… we should probably classify this as a very positive little glimmer of hope for Heart.
Updated February 3rd 2023: Nothing has been heard anymore about the 50th anniversary of Heart and Ann’s plans for an event with (former) members. Meanwhile: On February 4th A&N will be receiving a Grammy Lifetime Achievement award. Nancy will be attending. Ann has a prior engagement at a benefit. Ann has made a video that might be shown. Nancy has said here that she is in contact with Ann about what Nancy will say on stage at the event. “I wish Ann could be there, cos I can’t imagine she was not able to come but she had a gig she could not get out of, a show that she had promised earlier. So it’ll be me and my lonesome up there going knee shaking on the podium”. About the speech: “Ann made a video and I don’t know if they’re gonna show it, but we’ve been on contact about it a lot and she knows kinda what I’m gonna talk about so yeah we collaborate really well together.”
Updated October 26th 2022: Nancy just concluded her 2022 tour, the majority of it billed as “Nancy Wilson’s Heart”. She spoke to a radiostation: Nancy said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “But we have a really great team of players — everybody that I worked with on the last HEART tour, basically, player wise, and Kimberly Nichole. It just rounds it out so that I can do whatever the heck I want on a rock stage and do the songs I love doing. So, yeah, I’m real happy with this lineup.” […] Asked what her approach is to the HEART music when she performs with NANCY WILSON’S HEART, Nancy said: “I love these songs that I helped to create. And also I’ve got a really amazing band and an amazing singer, Kimberly Nichole, who was a finalist on ‘The Voice’ show at one point. And she rocks; she’s a rock singer. And she can achieve these songs that I, myself, as more of a guitar player than a real singer — I love singing, but she’s the one who can pull off ‘Barracuda’, ‘Crazy On You’ and some of these big, kind of iconic songs that it’s real fun to play… I love singing. So I sing a lot, just to give Kimberly Nichole a break from some of the more challenging songs that I can’t do myself. […] “We play a lot of HEART music. We also play some of my own music. But we play live — we’re completely live. We plug in and we sing and we play, and there’s no Pro Tools involved at all. So that’s kind of unusual these days. We’ve got skin in the game, and we play live.”
Updated October 9th 2022: Nancy has finally chimed in herself on all the 50-year talk coming from Ann. As reported earlier on this page the recent feedback coming from Nancy’s camp wasn’t very positive. Nancy, however, looks forward to it!
In a Canadian podcast (October 7th) Nancy confirmed being in conversations with Ann about the 50th anniversary event and a possible Heart tour after that.
Nancy says about Heart: “I think there is every uhm I have every hope of hopes right now because we’re in conversations and you know we haven’t really spent enough time mulling it over together, you know it’s all been sort of off on our own thing for a while but you know I think now that it seems things actually go on the road and things are opened up a little bit more for rock and roll tours and stuff like that uhm. We are exchanging dialogue about the 50th anniversary for one thing which is coming up as well as hopefully another Heart tour after that. Things evolve and like I say I think the reality of getting out there together on another big Heart tour would be easier now than it has been in a few years.” On looking forward to that: “Yeah me too!”
Nancy says about Ann and Nancy touring separately: “Yes, she’s been uhm more interested in doing something different on her own with her other new band called the Awesome Dawgs and you know they put an album out and they’re out on the road and they’re doing… you know it’s… When you’re approaching the 50 years of doing one band it’s really kinda of a… you know… it’s sort of an exercise in freedom to do something different like that and she ‘s doing some of the Heart songs. I’m doing I think more Heart songs because as a fan of the fans I always think… you know I’ll do some newer things… I’ll do some different things… I’ll do Amigo Amiga the song for Taylor uhm.. but uh I know as a fan… knowing the perspective of being a fan I think that’s really important to get out there and do those songs that are so meaningful for fans and just such a soundtrack to their lives and everything.”
Updated August 2nd 2022: If you’re more of a listener instead of a reader: check out this podcast.
Updated August 1st 2022: A staff member of Ann made a sobering statement on social media about the 2023 event Ann has been talking about these last couple of months. It is indeed about Ann and not necessarily about Nancy and/or Heart. The reaction was in response to the Worcester Magazine article mentioned below: “this show will be in celebration of Ann’s 50 years of being in Heart. i’d bet Nancy will be there to celebrate her sister’s tenure. should Nancy like to celebrate her own 50th year in Heart in 2024 then i’d bet Ann will show up to that party too. there’s actually much less drama going on backstage than people would like to think”.
A fan later dared to correct the staff member in the same thread, fully displaying the confusion Ann is spreading when contemplating celebrating 50 years of Heart without both sisters: “My understanding is that Ann wants to do a celebratory evening of 50 years of Heart with invites going out to everybody. To me that seems beautiful! If people opt out it’s too bad.” and “So much gossip. So few facts.”.
Under the same post, legendary Magic Man, mr. Michael Fisher has enlightened mongers about the founding of Heart and his opinion about a celebration: “There is this ongoing confusion about the founding of Heart. Some seem to think that Ann joined the band as if it already existed. Then there is some comment attributed to me? The founding year is misstated as 1973 when it was 1972. I wish we could get get this straight once and for all. The band was founded in April of 1972. That is when 3 unemployed musicians and a college student agreed to form a band and decided to call it Heart. Ann and I were blissfully living together in West Vancouver, BC. Roger and Steve began the process of applying for legal resident status and planning to move to Canada. I began a search for the additional musicians. I arranged to move from my little roundhouse into the adjacent big house where we could all live and have a rehearsal space. We did our first gig at the Cave, this month, August, 50 years ago. Ann did not join a band, she, Roger, Steve and I together created this thing that became Heart and she as a co-founder is more than entitled to try to pull together everyone to celebrate, especially in Vancouver where it all began. Even better would be a reunion tour where everyone could get beyond whatever baggage they are still carrying and be wonderful together again. Put a beautiful ribbon on our gift of creation and let it sail off into history where it will, little ship of dreams.”
Updated July 21st 2022: Ann has given a bit more information about her plan with Heart for 2023 and beyond. Worcester Magazine: Ann Wilson said she plans to celebrate her 50 years with Heart with an event in September 2023, in Vancouver, BC. “1973 was the first year we were ever really working,” she said. She also said that Nancy Wilson didn’t join Heart for another year or so. “The celebration next year is about my tenure in the band,” she said. Stories will be told and songs will be played, she said. “People who have been Heart fans all along will love it. It’s a one-time only unique experience.” Will she ever get back with Nancy Wilson and perform as Heart again? “I’m working on it,” Ann Wilson said. “We’re both doing solo projects right now. Solo projects are really fun.” Ann Wilson is writing songs for another solo album. There will be ‘”concerts through the end of September” and then she’ll “concentrate on writing and recording” the solo album. After that she’ll be concentrating on celebrating the 50th year of Heart in 2023. Still, “I would say Heart will be playing again in two years,” Wilson said. “We’ll have some kind of get-together. The invitation’s out there. We’ll see what she (Nancy Wilson) feels like.“
Updated July 19th 2022: Grammy.com: Obviously, you have a big anniversary coming up. Do you have plans for that? Ann: Yes we do. I’m not at liberty to say exactly what they are yet because it’s such early days, but sure. It will be next year. And we’re doing a thing. Definitely. We’re still formulating it now.
Updated June 19th 2022:
Updated June 16th 2022: Cincinnati.com: Q: You’ve worked with several different musicians in your band and with Heart. Do you have any wisdom for dealing with band drama? Ann: I think that it’s good for people in bands to know that if there’s going to be drama, usually it’s just as likely to come from people outside the band members, like wives, boyfriends – satellites. They might be bringing the drama into the band circle just as easily as the band members themselves. So I would suggest, if you’re going to go on the road, maybe don’t bring the old lady. Just be a good person and call her up or something like that. Make her know that she’s fine at home. Everything is good on the road. But the more satellites you carry around with you, the more drama there’s going to be. That’s been my experience.
Updated May 23rd 2022: Steve Fossen (bass player and co-founder of Heart) was interviewed recently on Youtube and shortly after the second minute he tells us what he knows about Ann & Nancy’s current relationship: They’re at the point that they don’t even call each other by name, they call each other “businesspartner”. About the 2019 tour: part of the requirements was that they couldn’t attend dinner at the same time and had it worked out so that their entourage didn’t pass in the hallways. While he wasn’t part of this tour, he does seem very confident about sharing this publicly, leading me to award this some credibility.
Updated May 10th 2022: Current events seem to have an effect on the value of the Heart catalogue (partly sold by A&N), as reported by the AIC: “Numis Securities analyst Ewan Lovett-Turner said investors would be ‘disappointed’ by the write-down in the C-shares. He noted reports of a split between Nancy Wilson and her sister and co-Heart singer Ann with Nancy now performing under the name of Nancy Wilson’s Heart. ‘We would not be surprised to see this type of event have an impact on valuation, although for such an established artist we would expect substantial value to remain in the catalogues and we do not know to what degree this risk may have been factored into the acquisition price,’ he said.”
Updated May 9th 2022: Matt Levy at NJ.com (New Jersey) is rather resolute: “Heart has broken up. The legendary rock band fronted by sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson have gone their separate ways. As a result, Ann has gone solo while Nancy has created the band Nancy Wilson’s Heart. Both are going on tour this year.”
Updated April 29th 2022: Ann: “It’s challenging, because I know that it’s hard for people to change,” Wilson tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “When they see me, they go, ‘Oh, well, that’s the lead singer for Heart. Where’s Nancy?’ It’s difficult to gain credibility as a solo [artist], and she’s experiencing that too” “[Taking time apart] allows us to bring stuff back to Heart that we didn’t have before,” she says. “We love each other. She and I really look forward to smooth sailing.” “There seems to be this mistaken myth that Nancy and I are at each other’s throats all the time,” Wilson says. “That’s really not the case. We’re family, and we’ll always be sisters. Things happen inside of families, and then you figure them out.”
Updated April 28th 2022: TME: I’ve heard rumors that something special might be in the works for Heart’s 50th anniversary next year. Is there anything you can tell me about that? AW: It’s still pretty early days regarding the topic of Heart’s 50th anniversary. I’m not really at liberty to discuss what’s being planned yet. We’re still looking for a venue but there is something definitely in the works. As soon as we can, we’ll start releasing information about it. TME: In other words, when it happens, we will like it? AW: You are going to love it! (laughs)
Updated April 23rd 2022: ETonline: The 71-year-old rock legend spoke with ET’s Rachel Smith at Smoakstack Studios in Nashville and opened up about what’s keeping Heart from officially getting back onstage. […] Wilson tells ET the topic around reuniting is a revolving conversation. “Yeah, we’re always in talks about that,” Wilson admits. “Right now, we don’t see eye to eye on who would be in the backup band, who would be onstage with us. I want these guys and Nancy [Wilson], right? And she’s got a whole other bunch of people out there on the West Coast that she wants, so we’re just working on [it] … but Heart will play again for sure.” For the uninitiated, the rock band was conceived in the late 1960s in the Pacific Northwest and underwent various name changes before officially becoming Heart in 1973. The following year, Wilson and her sister, Nancy, joined the group to become the first female-fronted hard rock band.
Updated April 19th 2022: Andrew: On the Heart side of things, the band hasn’t toured since before the pandemic began. You’ve recently mentioned that you’re very open to making another Heart record. Is there anything in the cards? Ann: It all depends on the songs. If I come up with a bunch of songs, or if Nancy [Wilson] does, that we both like, of course. I think it would be fun to record together again. I really do. Next year is the anniversary of fifty years since Heart first featured both me and Nancy in the band officially, and so there’s going to be a big event around that. We’re probably going to do try and do something fun. Maybe we will record, but it will all depend on the songs that we come up with. Heartlinker: on March 24th Ann said that Nancy joined in 1975.
Updated April 12th 2022: In a new interview in the 300th issue of Classic Rock, Ann addresses rumours that she’s been feuding with her younger sister. “We’re not.” she says. “It’s a myth. Nancy and I are okay with each other. We just have different ideas for what Heart should be, and we haven’t figured out a compromise yet. “Fifty years on, I still want it to break barriers and rules, and she’s more satisfied to ride the LA imaging thing and just do legacy stuff. So that’s a real split between us. Things like this will happen, though, but then they’ll get better, and we’ll love each other more.”
Updated April 12th 2022: Ann has given a little bit more info: Rock Cellar: You said recently that you want to make another album with Nancy for the 50th anniversary of Heart. Have you had any ideas about what would be on it? Ann Wilson: When Heart makes another record it will be all new original songs that I’ve written, hopefully that’s she’s written. Next year is our 50th anniversary. I’m having an event, I’m going to invite everyone who’s ever been in the band and that will be recorded. And then we’ll see what happens beyond that. I can’t say for sure when but it’s my mission to get that going.
On Social Media Nancy’s camp has declared that Nancy has no idea what this event is.
Updated April 11th 2022: When given a message from Mike Fisher about April 2022 being 50 years since the founding of Heart, Ann says: “That’s right yeah, yeah 50 years and most of it is just gonna be celebrated next year at our 50th reunion so we’re starting to plan things around that for next year“.
Updated April 8th 2022: AL.com: Your latest recording is out in 2022. Your first album, Heart’s “Dreamboat Annie,” came out in 1975. Big anniversary for “Dreamboat Annie” in 2025. Is the door open, as far as you’re concerned, for doing a Heart tour to celebrate that album, that anniversary? Ann Wilson: Well next year actually is the anniversary of the band starting. And I haven’t locked it yet with Nancy (Wilson, Heart guitarist/singer and Ann’s sister) but I know she’s gonna want to be part of it, and we’re gonna do a thing, probably up in Vancouver, B.C., to celebrate the 50th anniversary. “Dreamboat Annie”? Yeah, I guess so, when that year rolls around. I mean force willing. [Laughs] If we’re still here, we will definitely celebrate that.
Updated March 31st 2022: Blabbermouth: “Things happen in families,” Ann explains. “And that was a really good example of something that happened within a family, and we worked it out. But the part that made it hard was that it happened in the public eye. If it had happened privately, we’d have got the family in a room and sat down and worked it out between us. Instead, the police were called, and this myth was born that Nancy and I were feuding, and we were at each other’s throats all the time. And it’s really not like that at all.”
“It depends on the songs,” Ann says in her Rock Candy interview. “The songs lead everything. And I’m writing songs again now. I don’t know if they’ll be for my solo thing or for HEART. But yes, I would like to make another HEART album.“
Updated March 31st 2022: Smashing Interviews Magazine: You’ve said, “It’s harder to keep a band together than a marriage.” Is that because you often spend more time with the band than family? Ann Wilson: Yeah, spend more time with them and also, it’s not the actual band members. It’s their significant others who are speaking in their ears. If you’ve got five people, and each one of them has their own desires, wishes, emotions and everything, it’s five times as difficult than dealing with just one other person. You don’t necessarily love the band members either (laughs). I mean, hopefully you do, but that’s not always the case. As you know, love just kind of greases a lot of things in that you wouldn’t let go otherwise.
Smashing Interviews Magazine: Do you have plans to work on new music for Heart after the tour, Ann? Ann Wilson: Well, I’m writing new songs now. I’m not sure where they’re going to go, whether they’re going to go to Heart or where they’re going. But yeah, and next year is Heart’s 50th anniversary, and we do have some things planned for that. So hopefully, yeah, Heart will be. I just have to get on the same page as my sister about it.
Updated March 29th 2022: Nancy and her longtime bandmates (from Heart) are indeed going to tour as Nancy Wilson’s Heart
Updated March 28th 2022: In the interview mentioned below on the March 24th entry Ann elaborates on Heart’s 50th in 2023. BackstagePass dedicated a YouTube video to this interview and the headline mentions a Heart 2023 tour. In response to this YouTube video, sources close to the band have responded elsewhere on social media. One source posted that a tour was not mentioned in the interview. Another source posted that if there is a tour it would not be the 50th and responding to a remark that Ann joined Heart in 1973, the source reminded others that Ann isn’t the whole band and the 50th should be calculated from 1975, when the debut album was released.
Updated March 25th 2022: Dean Delray [50th minute]: “When you started working with Tom Bukovac and you immediately probably felt some chemistry and you’re like wow I want this guy to be the bandleader, is this where the friction came between you and your sister like this is a great band and I wanna use this band is that what happened?”. Ann: “Well ah no, Nancy and I had friction long before I met these guys”. Dean: Well I know that but I thought there was some friction over who was gonna be in the band for a tour. Ann: “Oh yeah right there is there is. She’s got one idea and I got another idea and I just… I just think that if she could only get in the room with these guys that I’m working with she would just go yeah you know cos there so they’re on such a level and they can just do anything and ah… but anyway she feels the same way about the guys she’s working with so we’ll work it out you know we’ll work it out eventually.“
Updated March 24th 2022: Expanding on her earlier remarks about the 50th anniversary Blabbermouth has transcribed: “Oh, I think so, yeah. Because next year’s the 50-year [anniversary] of when we actually got together and got going. Nancy [Wilson, Ann’s sister and HEART guitarist] didn’t join until ’75, but the band got going in ’73. So, yeah, we have a bunch of stuff planned for next year. So I can definitely see HEART doing something.”
Updated March 11th 2022: Blabbermouth: Ann was asked if it’s harder to keep a marriage or a band together. Ann laughed and responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I think it’s harder to keep a band together — in my experience. And I’ve only been married once and I’m still loving it and feel great about it. It’s harder to keep a band together because you have other people coming, like wives and significant others, talking in your bandmates’ ears and maybe saying things that pit them against you or against the group unity. It’s really hard. It’s kind of a revolving door with a band.” Listen to the whole podcast here: The Mistress Carrie Podcast
Heartlinker: that was some honest self reflection there Ann. Thanx!
Updated March 10th 2022: Ann says (14th minute) that “we have a lot of stuff planned for Heart in 2023″ (Heart’s 50th anniversary since coming together in Vancouver)
Updated February 26th 2022: Ann Wilson on Lisa Berigan’s podcast with BIG100 (4 minutes 30 seconds): “I think that by calling it Heart she moves into kind of like a tribute band phase. But I – you know- I’m happy that she gets to go out and have the fulfilling experience of being out there playing. It’s really good for musicians to get out there away from their motherband and stretch out. So I’m rally happy about that. Euhm cos that’s the same thing I’m doing too. When we do get back together we’ll both have a lot more to bring to Heart than before.”
About 2023 being the 50th anniversary of Heart: “Oh yes, oh yes, yes there will be. It’s very -I’m not a liberty to talk about it yet- because it’s still in the planning stages but yes there’ll be a thing for sure”. About touring in 2023: “I hope so. We’re just in the process of figuring out who the band is.”
Updated February 26th 2022: At least one journalist is lost in the confusion created by Ann & Nancy: “You can see Nancy Wilson the guitarist with a different lead singer, who I’m sure is fantastic if she can sing Ann Wilson. Or you can see Ann Wilson sing those iconic songs herself with her band. Both touring under the name ‘Heart’. Not much fun for the fans and probably a bit confusing.”
To be clear: Ann tours under a solo artist billing: Ann Wilson of Heart and Nancy plans to tour as a version of the band Heart: Nancy Wilson’s Heart instead of her billing of the last years: Nancy Wilson of Heart. As stated earlier below: “It might just seem to be semantics, in Heart land this subtle change has huge implications.” Judging by the reactions on social media and the press, that notion seems to be shared by more. Meanwhile Nancy’s staff is asking fans for setlist wishes (in a private Facebook group) and staunchly defending Nancy’s new plans on public social media. Although that last activity is likely not in a professional capacity.
Updated February 25th 2022: RollingStone has commented on the situation: Just when it seemed like Ann and Nancy Wilson had finally put their differences aside for the good of their fans, their legacy, and their family, news erupted this week that the Heart civil war is back on. The situation is so dire that a new group called Nancy Wilson’s Heart has been formed where the guitarist will perform the group’s classic catalog with vocalist Kimberly Nichole. [..] It’ll be very sad if that progress is reversed simply because they can’t agree on who should play in their backing band. With all due respect to those fine musicians, none of them were around during the glory days of Heart in the Seventies and Eighties. Fans come to Heart gigs to see Ann and Nancy Wilson. Very few of them care who is on bass, drums, or keyboards. [..] Kimberly Nichole is a fantastic singer, and she hopefully has a long and bright future in the industry, but Ann is the vocalist Heart fans want to see delivering the classics next to Nancy. Those two have gotten over some pretty bad situations in the past. Let’s hope they find a way to resolve this one soon.
Radiostation 97X simply says: “[..] as soon as you hang the name ‘Heart’ on your show without your sister, you have killed the band. Hopefully, you haven’t killed the legacy along with it.”
Updated February 24th 2022: ABC Audio: Now, Ann Wilson tells ABC Audio that although she and her sister currently aren’t agreeing about Heart’s direction moving forward, she insists that she and Nancy aren’t feuding, and she feels that they eventually will be able to resolve their differences. “There’s a lot of myth about what’s going on between me and Nancy, that there’s a feud or something like that. There really isn’t any feud between us personally,” Ann says. “We don’t see eye to eye on the shape that Heart should take. Like…I want to see it continue to evolve and break barriers and be relevant. And she…doesn’t want to try new things that much, you know.” The singer adds, “I’m not trying to diss her at all, because I think we get a really bad rap for just being at each other’s throats. We’re not. We have a disagreement on who would be in the Heart band is all right now, but we’re working on it.”
Added February 23rd 2022: Nancy has elaborated on the new billing as Nancy Wilson’s Heart. In this interview she said: Well it’s been a while since Heart had a big offer the table last year for a bigger tour but Ann wasn’t interested with my line-up of guys that we were out with before. She has a new line-up of guys that she wanted me to join up with. But I sorta like well I don’t really know them and don’t have loyalty either really for anybody like that so I kinda shined it on and decided that when I do go out with my singer Kimberly I can telegraph to the people coming to the show that they’re gonna hear Heart songs and in a whole different way than ever expected. No comparisons to Ann singing or Kimberly Nichole singing those same songs just became it’s apples and oranges and you can’t compare that stuff so I figured that’s a way to let them know that it’s not just Nancy Wilson of Heart doing whatever, but it’s Nancy Wilson’s Heart where your gonna hear more Heart stuff.
This interview has led to headlines here:
Added February 11th 2022: As hinted earlier below by Nancy she has announced on Twitter and Facebook that she will perform as Nancy Wilsons Heart (spelling will likely change). So that’s a band instead of a solo billing. Great to see familiar faces in the line up!
As a Heartmonger this move comes across as a new step towards prolonging the hiatus of the band Heart. As you may know: to be billed as Heart you need both Ann & Nancy on stage (or for some fans even more original members). At least that’s the consensus among mongers that flows from Ann & Nancy both owning 50% of the brand. Both sisters were already using the logo when performing as “Ann Wilson of Heart” or “Nancy Wilson of Heart”.
Responding to a disappointed fan, Nancy -or her camp- said today: “I wish it was that simple. As I said above, I’m sorry you feel I didn’t try, and you all feel this hurt. Deeply. I tried to make a tour this summer work and get it together for the time being without abandoning the players we currently agreed to. No one is ever replacing Heart. This is just my take. And no one can ever replace or is trying to replace Ann. I hope you give what I have going a chance.“
Meanwhile, Ann has announced a series of 2022 dates billed as “An Evening with Ann Wilson of Heart and the Amazing Dawgs”. 11 words, that would have been just one, if Nancy had agreed to join her outfit. As told extensively (also see below), she understandably declined that offer.
Added February 4th 2022: Ann & Nancy perform separately as “Ann Wilson of Heart” or “Nancy Wilson of Heart” and when playing together as “Heart” (last time in 2019). In Las Vegas Magazine Nancy is quoted contemplating a new name for future performances: “Nancy Wilson’s Heart”:
Las Vegas Magazine: The Venetian shows with Styx also allows Wilson to envision a residency of her own in Las Vegas, which could easily have a “storyteller” element. Heart’s career is now part of rock mythology and Wilson, an inspiration to several generations of musicians, has a personable way of expressing herself that would translate well to headlining extended engagements in the city. “I had this idea that it would be pretty cool to lean into a potential residency for Nancy Wilson’s Heart,”
It might just seem to be semantics, in Heart land this subtle change has huge implications.
Added January 24th 2022: ABC Audio has picked up Nancy’s remarks from TalkshopLive as well: “Broken Heart? Nancy Wilson reveals Heart’s plans to tour again have been shelved” : Last year, Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson told ABC Audio that both she and her sister and band mate Ann were interested in touring together again, possibly in 2022, but Nancy now says a conflict with her sibling has put those plans on hold. On Friday, Nancy took part in a livestream chat at the social-networking site TalkShop.Live […] Nancy revealed that discussions about a new Heart tour between her and Ann’s camp broke down over a disagreement regarding the musicians that would back her and Ann. “[T]hey were trying to bring their new lineup of players that Ann wanted to put on stage as Heart with me and I wasn’t really willing to do that,” Nancy explained, referring to Ann’s current solo group, which is called The Amazing Dawgs. “I don’t know those guys, you know, and I didn’t want to feel like a sideman,” Nancy continued. “So, [the tour]…kind of went away. They didn’t really respond to any of our responses in response to…what they [wanted]…They wanted this and I didn’t want that and nobody responded to anything, so…” She added, “[M]y thing was that everybody that’s played on the last big Heart tour [in 2019] would be back, you know, in the same band,” then noted, “I think Ann might be a little bored with Heart. I don’t know.” It’s worth pointing out that most of Heart’s backing band for their 2019 tour are part of Nancy’s current solo group.
Heartlinker adds: on Facebook sources close to the band respond to ABC Audio article and the many comments from Heartmongers. Noteworthy information is that the offer was a Heart/The Pretenders tour and Nancy indeed wants the 2019 line-up to tour again: “She is loyal to the band who she loves and committed to in 2019. No need to throw them aside. Great people and musicians”.
Added January 24th 2022: LasVegasSun: The two sisters toured together as Heart as recently as 2019, but there aren’t any plans at this time to reunite under that banner for any live shows or recordings. Nancy has performed just a handful of times since the pandemic set in, with that regular touring Heart band plus Nichole, while Ann has been performing with other players. “It’s pretty trick with Heart these days. There was an offer on the table for this year, but it was ignored,” Nancy says. “I was ready to go out but I guess it was not taken seriously. I think communication just kind of broke down. We’ll see where we get to.”
Added January 22nd 2022: On January 20th 2022 Nancy was interviewed on TalkshopLive and here’s what we’ve learned: (minute 45-47) When asked if Nancy and Ann have had any communications over the holidays, or recently just touching base, Nancy replies: “Occasionally we kinda get on a trail with our other sister Lynn, or Sue Ennis of other dear friend, we’ll just kinda go -hey, happy easter-, you know -hey-. And that’s pretty much the extent of you know how personal we are anymore”. Asked about the Live Nation offer and if it’s on the back burner, Nancy replies: “Well, you know it’s… I don’t think it is, because when … they were trying to bring their new line up of players that Ann wanted to put on stage as Heart with me and I wasn’t really wiling to do that. I don’t know those guys you know and I did not want to feel like a side man. It was just. So and it kind of went away. They did not really respond to any of our responses in response to theirs. They wanted this and I did not want that and nobody responded. […] Yeah, it’s gotta be the right vibe and right people. My thing was that everybody that played on the last big Heart tour would be back in the same band. I think -I don’t know- I think Ann might be a little bored with Heart? I don’t know. […] She calls them the Awesome Dawgs. I think they’re mainly Nashville players, which are good of course. But I’m just a loyal person. I like to stick to the people I love, you know. And just be thrown in to a new mix all together with people I don’t even know…. So it didn’t feel fair to me, yeah”.
Added September 12th 2021: UDiscover
Added August 21st 2021: ABC: Heart‘s Ann and Nancy Wilson have both been busy with solo musical projects since the band last toured in 2019, but Nancy says she thinks there’s a good chance that the Rock & Roll Hall Fame group will hit the road again, possibly as early as next year. “[Ann and I] don’t…speak real directly really often these days, but I think she wants to do [another tour],” the Heart guitarist tells ABC Audio. “And I want to do it. She knows that I want to do it.” Nancy continues, “I think it’s just, you know, the devil’s in the details about who’s in the band and…making all the choices, because we’re partners in the project, so, you know, prerequisite decisions have to be made first.” With the two sisters recording and releasing their own solo projects lately, they now each have backing groups. With that in mind, Nancy notes, “To me, the most important thing is who’s in the [Heart touring] band. So, we’re gonna figure it out.” While no definite plans are in place for a new Heart trek, Nancy reveals that Live Nation has made an offer to the band for a 2022 tour.
Added May 23rd 2021: Grammy: I know things have been kind of hot and cold with your main project over the last few years. How would you describe your personal and creative relationship with Ann today? Nancy: Well, that’s a loaded question. I think we’re fine. We both kind of welcomed the break from each other and from Heart in a certain way. I think there’s a certain blessing inside the larger curse of the whole shutdown we’ve been living through. Personally, I feel like it’s been a relief and a chance to reorganize who I am, thinking of who I am inside the larger picture of Heart and who I am outside of Heart altogether. There’s a lesson in this shutdown for me, and part of it is to remember who I am without defining myself as somebody in Heart. Which is a beautiful reckoning, I think. There’s an offer for Heart to go out in 2022. I think that would be awesome to do that. I would want to do that. But having been outside of the world of it and the pressure of it and the framework of it for this long now has been very freeing. I feel I’ve gained a lot of momentum as a person because of it.
Added May 7th 2021: Nancy on Cleveland.com: “I think the first thing would be to get Heart on the road in 2022. I’m excited about that for sure. And then we can see. The last Heart tour was really well-received, with the stage production and everything. We were distanced a bit (after Ann’s husband was arrested in August of 2016 for assaulting Nancy’s twin sons at a concert). That was a hard thing that happened, an unnecessary thing that happened. It was hard to bounce back from that for a couple or three years. But once a big offer again came on the table, said, “Let’s put it behind us and be adults and get up on stage and have fun.” Hopefully we can do that again soon.”
Added April 29th 2021: Ann: “We haven’t written together in a while,” she said. “[Nancy] lives in the San Francisco area, and I live in Florida. The times when we see each other are the times when Heart tours. And, of course, for the last year Heart hasn’t been able to tour, so I haven’t seen her for a little while. You know … she’s living her life, and I’m living mine. She’s collaborating with some really cool people, and so am I.”
Nancy: In 2016, the sisters had a falling out over a family dispute. Before Nancy and Ann reunited as Heart for a big tour in 2019, they performed together in New York City for a benefit concert. Nancy is asked if she was nervous. “I was a little bit nervous, yeah,” she says. “We sort of fell out of touch because of the ‘unfortunate event’ a couple of years before that. We had been out of touch for a while and I was licking my wounds and just kind of putting it on hold. “The first thing was the big soundcheck for the [Love Rocks NYC] show. There were a lot of people and a lot of big energy all around. [We knew we were] thrust into an intensive situation where we have to figure out how to say hello again. It was easier with a lot of people around. I just showed up and she was on stage already and I kind of took her by surprise and gave her a great big hug and we were like, ‘Oh, yeah. It’s you. I know you.’ “We’re sisters, first and foremost, and that’s the most important story to tell about Heart. It’s not really a business between me and Ann. It shouldn’t really be a business. That [doesn’t] help the sisterhood. That’s where the blood is thicker than water. That’s the biggest joy to celebrate.” The “Love Alive” tour began a few months later. Was it like getting back on a bicycle? “(laughs) It’s a metal horse, to match your analogy. It was a very large tour. For me, it was really kind of a victory lap, kind of what I was hoping for a couple of years beforehand. We had a huge production that I worked on with the production designer, Jim Rozner. “There was a moment where these cool lights shine down like a cone shape, and that would be perfect for ‘Alone,’ where you just see Ann, all by herself in a cone of light. And then I come up and sing the harmony and there’s another cone of light. “It was really a well-crafted show. We had never been so flashy as a band before; it had always been more simple. No bells, no whistles. But in this case, this was like a return, a celebration of a band that has not been on the road for three years, so might as well make it big and flashy. And it worked.”
“Live Nation has put a big offer on the table for Heart for 2022. That will be a really fun thing to look forward to! Ann and I are both up for it.”
Added January 30th 2021: Reading Nancy’s remarks in this late 2020 Rock Candy Magazine interview, I felt the need to share and ‘re-open’ this section of the website. She says Heart is on hold and she only exchanges text messages with Ann. During the 2016-2019 hiatus we all read pretty similar stuff right?
BELOW THE UPDATES LEADING UP TO THE 2019 HEART TOUR
Added March 7th 2019: with the announcement of a HEART TOUR and the girls on one stage in NYC March 7th 2019, the hiatus is over and thus this part of this website will no longer be added to.
Added February 9th 2019: FANCLUB UP AGAIN and promises ticket pre-sales. It is now practically guaranteed Heart is going to tour again. The fanclub did not accept anymore new fans and renewing had been disabled, causing all memberships to expire during these last three years.
Added February 7th 2019: Radio.com reports they can confirm a Heart Summer Tour here.
Added February 6th 2019: A COUNTDOWN CLOCK HAS REPLACED THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE!
Added February 5th 2019: Eddie Trunk talked about a possible Heart reunion last week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MUdR_UCH4I
Added January 29th 2019: In a short audioclip from NAMM (end of January) Nancy responds to the question about a 2019 Heart reunion: “Well I can only say STAY TUNED“
Added January 8th 2019: In this audio interview from early December Nancy says: “There is a lot speculation about Heart next Summer too, but Roadcase Royale is my like prize band. I love this band and even if Heart goes out, we’re gonna keep going out with me and Roadcase Royale.”
Added December 27th 2018: Ann at Oshkosh Independent: Q: Ann, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask, will there be a reunion of Heart? AW: Well, I’m not at liberty to discuss that right now. Of course there will be at some time. There is a lot of talk going on right now. We just really can’t announce it yet.
Added December 19th 2018: Ann on SeattleRefinded: “There’s an urban myth going around that Nancy and I have a big feud going on,” laughed Wilson. “Which we do not. We love each other[but] I cannot say out loud right now that we’re going on tour.”
Added December 1st 2018: Pat Francis: “What happens in 2019? Do we get another Roadcase Royale album? Are there more show dates? What can we expect from Nancy Wilson in the new year? Nancy: Lots of me everywhere ;) […] Well you know, euhm hoping for the Heart thing to happen, can’t really say exactly, but it’s looking pretty good. We have loyal fans and those are good songs. [..] So you know Roadcase Royale and I, we have plenty more stuff to do and that’s not gonna stop anytime soon. I would never be able to live without my Roadcase Royale band cos they were lifesavers in really tough times for me and we have more music to write and more songs to record and more shows to play where-ever we can get them.”
Nancy on KX93.5: There is a lot of talk right now about a Heart tour. You know I can’t really give anything away exactly quite yet. I’m excited and i think it looks very very positive so yeah, it is all in the works.
Added November 19th 2018: Ann repeats her earlier comments about the urban myth and her wishes to refresh Heart out of an artistic need instead of money or fans here on Sirius XM.
Added November 8th 2018: Danny and Jenny (47 minutes into the podcast): Any plans for Heart to tour?
Nancy: Well there is big offer up on the table from Livenation right now. We’re talking. We’re trying to pound out the details. So next summer. It looks really promising. It’ll be Heart. Me and my sister and who ever is in that band. We’re trying to figure that out right now. We probably start in the late spring and go through the summer. Probably like 50 dates l. US. I’d like to do Europe too. Cos we haven’t done that for ages.
Added October 27th 2018: Quinn & Cantara had a call with Ann and asked: Is Heart touring soon? Ann: “Well Nancy and I’ve been talking about it and we’re trying to figure out how to bring it back in a new fresh way. I think next year.“
Added October 2nd 2018: Blabbermouth: Nancy Wilson says that “it’s looking really good for a HEART reunion tour” in 2019. Nancy and Ann Wilson had a falling out during HEART’s 2016 tour, when Ann’s husband Dean Welter was arrested for assaulting Nancy’s then-16-year-old twin sons in a backstage altercation at a gig near their hometown of Seattle. He pleaded guilty to two lesser assault charges to avoid jail time, but the damage to HEART had been done. During an appearance on the latest episode of the “Let There Be Talk” podcast with rock and roll comedian Dean Delray, Nancy revealed that she has since reconnected with her sister and discussions are underway about a possible comeback next year. “I’ve gotta say, it’s looking really good for a HEART reunion tour,” Nancy said (hear audio below). “There’s a big offer up there on the table. Me and Ann are talking, so we’ll keep talking.” Speaking about the incident which caused HEART to go on a kind of hiatus for the past two years, Nancy said: “There was a family drama that was highly uncalled for and unnecessary and hurtful, and it was just one of those things that takes time to get past. So, a couple of years have gone by. It’s not anything that Ann ever did wrong, or I ever did wrong, but it’s just one of those family dramas that just happened, and it just kind of poisoned the atmosphere for a while there. So it’s good. I’ve had a real positive feeling about now that I’m communicating directly more with Ann.” Asked who it was that made the initial contact about a possible reunion tour, Nancy said: “I’ve been sort of [reaching out to Ann] for a while, but she was kind of busy and, I think, scared to talk. And I kind of said, ‘I’m not ever gonna confront you about anything, but there is this huge offer on the table, so we should talk — just the two of us.’ So we’re in that process right now. It’s kind of exciting.”
Not part of the Blabbermouth transcript and article are remarks by Nancy about who might play with them. What would you do for band members would you just audition some new guys? Nancy: “Well she’s got some players she loves. I got some players I love. There are two different bands right now.” Would Chris Joyner be in? Nancy: “I would love to have Chris in. That’s kinda part of the discussions right now.” What about Howard, would he ever in the band again. Nancy: “I don’t know. If I bring a guitar player in with me which I request to do. If I couldn’t. I have like a shortlist, so I don’t know but Howards on it. […] It would probably be late Spring into the Summer.”
Here the whole thing:
Added September 29th 2018: Omny.fm: When asked about the status of Heart and her relationship with her sister Nancy, Ann didn’t hold back, “We had lunch the other day!” she says, “it’s pretty much an urban myth that me & Nancy are having a big feud.” She continued “we mostly gossiped about family but also what we can do in the future together as Heart.”
Added September 18th 2018: WHXC.com: Ann Wilson confirmed to us that she and Nancy are definitely now on speaking terms: “Well, right now Nancy’s working with her band Roadcase Royale, I’m doing this — I’m doing my thing. And we don’t have any deadlines for Heart right now that I can talk about. Contrary to urban myth, there’s no feud between Nancy and I, we just wanted to get out and stretch our wings. And sure, we’re. . . we’re talking. We’re sisters. We’re in a family, y’know, (laughs) so, y’know, everything’s good there. I saw her a couple of months ago. I didn’t see the kids ’cause they’re off at school — but I saw her, and our other sister, Lynn. We had a get-together. It was good.”
Added September 13th 2018: Blabbermouth: Ann Wilson says that she is planning to reconnect with her sister Nancy to discuss a possible HEART comeback in 2019. “Just about everyone I’ve talked to today has asked me to comment on this rumor that there’s a HEART reunion next year,” Ann told Jim Kerr of New York’s Q104.3 radio station earlier today (Thursday, September 13; see video below). “And I haven’t heard about that yet. But Nancy and I will be getting together soon to talk and see if we have any ideas on that. We will not ever be… I will never agree to going back out there in a mechanical, money-grab-type way; at this point in my life, I’m not gonna do that — I’m gonna make every minute count and make it real. So we’ll talk and we’ll figure out if we can figure out a fresh, new, cool way.”
She added: “HEART was conceived in an atmosphere of idealism, and that’s how it has to be reconceived now for me to be interested in doing it. So it’s possible.”
Added September 11th 2018: AARP.org: Immortal did not entail input from Wilson’s sister Nancy, although their Heart break may be on the mend. Two years ago, Ann’s husband, Dean Wetter, assaulted Nancy’s twin sons on a tour bus in Auburn, Wash. He was arrested, pleaded guilty and was placed on probation. The sisters became estranged and rarely communicated, pushing Heart into hiatus. Nancy formed a new band, Roadcase Royale. “Some stuff happened between us,” Ann allows. “We took a real break from each other. It was unavoidable just because of how many years and miles we spent living in each other’s pockets. Now we’re talking. We’re not talking about business. We’re talking about family and the rest of life. We needed to remember who we were outside of the Heart machine. Now it’s a matter of healing enough.” She foresees a future for Heart but won’t abandon her solo career. “I’d like to make another solo record,” she says. “Being a solo artist is liberating.”
Added August 23rd 2018: Tampabay.com: The familial tensions that have put Heart on hiatus might have something to do with her setlist choices. Wilson and her sister Nancy haven’t played together since 2016, when Ann’s husband, according to Rolling Stone, allegedly assaulted Nancy’s teenage sons in a backstage altercation at a gig near their hometown of Seattle. He pleaded guilty to two lesser assault charges to avoid jail time, but the damage to Heart had been done. Wilson, 68, said she believes she and Nancy will play together again, though she doesn’t know when. She also makes a point of noting her solo band “is really the best band I’ve been in, in terms of what they can do.” Hmm.
Added August 15th 2018: Nancy keeps putting her message out there that she is ready to talk music with Ann. This time at pursuit.ca: With all of that going on Wilson hopes 2019 sees Heart back on the road. “We’re trying to assemble all the pieces and the communication it would take to make a Heart tour for next summer because the offers are out there,” she says. “It just depends on getting with Ann, sitting with Ann in a room – just the two of us – and talking about what would that exactly mean. What kind of a show would that be? I’m really excited to figure that out. “I don’t know how we would ever not want to do that. It would be so good for the legacy and good for the band. If the ducks all lined up in a row that would just be fantastic.”
Added August 11th 2018: The Chronicle Herald:
But for now, the new group keeps her focused and driven, and excited about being on stage again.
Nancy: “I’m not saying I wouldn’t jump at the chance to go out next summer with Heart either, because I would love to do that,” she says. “But it’s like really good exercise for me to play with a new band and do more singing and solo playing, and bring it to a level of freshness that I can inject back into Heart, whenever we do get back together.”
So it looks like the future of Heart is more of a when and less of an if at this point?
“There’s a lot of excitement about next summer up on the table right now,” says Wilson. “I’ll probably go find Ann and talk to her, and see, like, ‘Whaddya think?’ What would a new Heart be, and what would it sound like on tour? What songs are we thinking about and what covers could we do?
“Right now, I think it’s just a matter of when. Families go through these sort of things, but to me it’s less about the family issue and more about what the legacy of Heart is, and how many fans would be let down if we didn’t make one more valiant effort to go back to a high note with it.”
Added August 4th 2018: UltimateClassicRock.com has similar quotes from Ann as Metro, but with certain essential extra’s: While there doesn’t seem to be any rush for either her or her sister Nancy to return to Heart, Wilson swears the internal problems they faced last year are behind them. “Right now Nancy’s working with her band, Roadcase Royale, and I’m doing my thing, and we don’t have any deadlines for Heart that I can talk about,” Wilson said. “Contrary to urban myth, there’s no feud between Nancy and I. We’re talking. We’re sisters, so everything’s good there. We just wanted to get out and stretch our wings, and we’re loving that. When the time is right, we’ll get back together and do something again.”
Added August 2nd 2018: Metro.us: We’ve come to a new conclusion, a happy one you’re hearing here first, in separate interviews with each Wilson sister. To paraphrase Mark Twain, “the reports of Heart’s death are greatly exaggerated.”
“I’ve been reaching out as there are enticing plans on the table for a big tour in 2019,” says Nancy of the hopeful possibilities of a live reunion. “I’d like to figure out what would be exciting and different for both of us going forward.”
“There’s an over-inflated urban myth that Nancy and I are in some sort of big feud,” says Ann. “We worked out our cranky issues a couple of years ago, and have just been enjoying the freedom of time off and doing our solo things.”
[…]
When it comes to the future of the Heart band and making that work, each Wilson sounded quietly optimistic.
“We’re not at each other’s throats – won’t wind up doing a Mick and Keith,” says Ann. “No matter what you do or say right, musically, for 40+ years, it’s one negative thing that people latch onto and embroider… She’s my sister. We have a band together, but, we’re both growing, and it will be exciting to see – when we do get back together –what we both learned, expanded and can bring into Heart.”
Nancy has been the busiest field offers related to Heart, a Broadway musical involving producer Rita Wilson (not related, Tom Hanks’ wife) about women’s empowerment and incorporating Heart songs.
“We’re singing Heart songs in the Roadcase Royale set, Liv does them so that you’re hair stand up – so different from Ann whose powerful voice we based Heart on,” says Nancy. “I’m looking to catch Ann’s ear soon – sit down in a room with just her, just us. We should figure out what songs we would do and not, what new and different show we would create. I’m anxious to see how this happens. The fans want this, which is the most important thing.”
Added July 26th 2018: NorthWest Music Scene:
Great news Heart fans, it sounds like our beloved Ann and Nancy have been talking and in this current interview with Philadelphia’s classic rock station WMGK, Nancy revealed that talks are underway for a summer 2019 tour.
WMGK’s André Gardner was chatting with Heart’s Nancy Wilson on Wednesday and she told him that she and Ann are talking again and are in the early stages of a HEART reunion tour for 2019!
[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/andregardner/nancy-wilson-on-heart-reunion-7-25-18-andre-gardner-wmgk[/soundcloud]
Added July 23rd 2018: Ann was interviewed by UK based Classic Rock Magazine this month:
Added May 1st 2018: Nancy revealed to ABC Radio, “Heart has a nice offer to go on a tour next year, so [I’m] hoping [for that].” Nancy says that she and her sister “[have] done a little more communicating, more recently,” but notes that the chit-chat is centered around “family stuff,” like “what the kids are up to and who’s gonna get married or have babies.” But, as she admits to ABC Radio, “We have to have the business conversation pretty soon.”
Added April 18th 2018: And here’s Nancy’s view that she pinned on her Twitter page. I see it as a direct response to what Ann gives a as the reason for stopping Heart, a reason that disregards what actually happened and does not explain why she won’t speak to Nancy for 18 months and counting.
WOMC Detroit noticed something as well in their article “Heart: On Life Support?“: It’s looking more and more like Heart’s hiatus is going to be permanent. […] Asked backstage Saturday at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony (by Stash of WZBA in Baltimore) if she and Nancy will put Heart back together, Ann completely glossed over the real reason things went south.[…]
Added April 16th 2018: Ann on UltimateClassicRock.com
Hear here say it in a few more words….
Added April 2nd 2018: Cleveland.com: Ann Wilson could have dodged questions about the episode, but met them head-on, and said that while she regrets what happened, some sort of time apart was inevitable for two siblings who’ve been performing together since they were little girls, and the incident is evidence of that. “That in itself is proof why we needed a breather,” Wilson said in a call from a hotel in Los Angeles. It may take a while, and she’s really not sure under what circumstances it could happen, but Wilson said she doesn’t see the band permanently splitting.”I think that people should realize that Heart will exist until you hear otherwise,’‘ she said. In the meantime, she had some advice for fans. “They should listen to what they have – my thing and Nancy’s Roadcase Royale,’‘ she said. “She and I were at odds with what to do with Heart in 2016. That really was the beginning of the transition we’re feeling now. “Heart is what I make it,” she said. “I don’t have a goal for Heart or for myself,’‘ Wilson said. “All I have is getting into the present moment of the journey of making music.”
Added March 31st 2018: Ann was interviewed by Backstage Axxess (published March 30th) and this is what was said about the status of Heart:
BA: I’d be remissed if I didn’t ask you about the future of Heart. I don’t know if you have any comments or if you wanna say anything regarding that?
Ann: Oh yeah euhm… it’s important that people know that we’re not having any kind of big family feud or anything. I think a lot of these headlines from last year were way too tabloidy. And euhm what is happening is that Nancy and I are having a whole lot of fun being independent. And we played together for 45 years and we need some time away from each other and we need some time to stretch out on our own. So there will not be a Heart reunion this year and that’s all I know for right now.
Added March 16th 2018: I’ve written out parts of the podcast mentioned below. It seems things haven’t changed at all and Heart is pretty much in the same place since October 2016.
Bob Lefsetz: Who is the manager now? Nancy: Right now we’re between. […] BL: What’s it’s like being on stage playing Crazy On You forty years later? Nancy: Well it is really a testament to songs like Crazy On You and Barracuda that they’re still fun to play and you see people react to it you know. I don’t think Ann feels the same way. I think she feels more like I’ve done this enough and I wanna do something really different and fun for herself. But I still get a big thrill out of like doing the kick when Crazy On You starts and seeing people go nuts and it just like it is a high. [..] BL: So I mean this is public information but on the last Heart tour the public story was that there was an altercation between Ann’s husband and your children. Where does that leave the relationships now? Nancy: Well you know right now sadly it hasn’t left it in a good place at all. euhm you know. I know Ann and I will always adore each other and wanna you know always attest to loving each other. But that was just kind of a weird… I think it was kind a powermove and a control thing. BL: In addition to the bad behavior it was that subtext? Nancy: Yeah that’s what I believe and it’s been sort of that way ever since. I understand her desire to get out there and not do the same thing and not be hold into the Heart machine you know but I think the sad part.. I mean I respect her wishes to get out there and try new stuff which is great and healthy for her but for me… for the fans I think it is a sad thing cos we still have it in us to take it around you know again. BL: Are you in communication with Ann? Nancy: Not really. I’ve kind of put it out there a few times and it’s just not coming back. BL: You know for an outside observer it would seem that it was her husband who was accused of bad behavior so you think that she would want to be the one to be apologetic. Nancy: Well I think she wants to apologize for him… right and protect him. It is her first real relationship since the very beginning so you know I think she’s protecting her newfound relationship and that’s more informant to her right now than pretty much anything else. BL: So in any event you’re amiable to […] building again first on a personal level so it is more on her end that she’s reluctant. Nancy: Yes. Yes I think she’s reluctant and just gonna have to figure it out for a while and maybe be ready maybe not.
Added March 15th 2018: In this lengthy podcast Nancy is interviewed about the past, the present and the future. Besides the very interesting and new to many mongers glimpse into the career of Heart, Nancy also gives an update about the future of Heart. Unfortunately her efforts to contact Ann still go unanswered. Nancy also lingers about the reasons Ann might have or might be at play in this situation.
Added January 31st 2018: Ann has announced a series of dates as part of the classic rock package tour “Stars Align Tour” by Livenation. This means that 2018 will probably not see a Heart reunion. Nancy is expected to join Bob Seger again this Spring or Fall.
Added December 4th 2017: Nancy at New Orleans Living Magazine: “For Liv to lose her mentor Prince was like losing a family member, and I feel like I kind of lost Ann quite a bit in many ways, and, until we all figure that out, I still have a pretty deep sense of loss about that.” [..] “Our mom was so strong and encouraged us to follow our bliss and follow the joy that we were going to get from doing music. Even though we went to college and kept up with school for a little while, we knew what we were going to do and we went and did it. You know, Heart is a good band and hopefully it has some future still left to it. After me and Ann can finally figure out what that is, that would be great.”
Added November 20th 2017: Nancy at ofpersonalinterest.com: As far as Heart goes, we may have seen the end of it’s long run. It stopped on such a weird, awkward, and unnecessarily hurtful note though, and I really don’t want to go through another holiday season without talking to Ann. Last year was a painful experience. I keep reaching out to her, through our sister Lynn, hoping that we can get together around Thanksgiving. Just so the three of us could be together and talk, as sisters. It doesn’t have to be about Heart, but it has to be about…sisters.
Added November 12th 2017: PopEntertainment.com: I know there have been some problems, and you and Ann are currently taking some time to concentrate on your own music. Do you think the two of you will get back together as Heart – or even as a different band like The Lovemongers – in the future?
Nancy: It’s hard to say right now. I’m still consumed and excited by Roadcase Royale right now. And I know that Ann is still doing her own thing, so I don’t know where the future of Heart might fall. I don’t see it anytime soon, just because we’re both consumed with our other side projects. That might be the healthiest thing, for Heart to just be nowhere for a while. (laughs) I think if me and Ann ever came back together musically, it might be on some completely different kind of project. Something really different from Heart.
Added November 3rd 2017: Washington Times: Q: What will it take to bring you and your sister together again? Nancy: I think that just getting a conversation in the same room with our sister Lynn in person would be a wonderful first step toward resolution. Q: Do you think we will ever see another Heart tour or album? Nancy: I would personally love to see the formulation of future Heart music and Heart shows, and my fingers remain crossed.
Added October 23rd 2017: ClassicRockRevisited.com: Let’s just get this one out of the way. Ann…Nancy…always mentioned in the same breath. Are things bad? Will there be a Heart?
Nancy: When Ann and I can get together and actually sit down and communicate and figure out what Heart is going to be or look like, then I’m all for that. And I have reached out quite a few different times – the time just hasn’t been right. However, I remain optimistic and right now, I’m mainly excited and staying focused on my new project, Roadcase Royale.
Added September 28th 2017: Nancy Wilson on The Daily Times: “At this point, I see Roadcase Royale being my trajectory into the future, and I’m kind of glad,” Wilson said. “I feel excited about this band, and I don’t feel like I have to make a terrible choice between two things that I really love. If me and Ann’s relationship can find its way back, maybe later we can do Heart again.”
Added September 23rd 2017: ABCradio: As for when Wilson will reunite with her sister, Heart co-founder Ann Wilson, that’s still unknown. A rift between the two prompted an indefinite hiatus. Nancy tells ABC News she’s waiting for when “me and my sister can actually have a discussion,” adding, “I’ve kind of reached out, but she hasn’t been ready to reach out.”
Added September 20th 2017: Nancy on Billboard: “I don’t really seem to have much dialogue with my sister any more — she doesn’t write, she doesn’t call…and that’s fine with me,” Nancy says. “If down the line we kind of restore our relationships a little bit and put a little work into that, that’s one thing. But for right now (Roadcase Royale) is what I’m doing. I’m ready to just do this new thing now and not look back.“
Added September 12th 2017: Nancy has been talking in two different interviews.
GuitarWorld asks “What is the future of Heart?” (click here and skip to 32:40)
Nancy Wilson (with Liv Warfield): “Well, people wanna know. I wanna know myself, just to be honest. You know to be really super candid about it I’m really happy with this right now. Because there was a lot of kind of there is some scar tissue there and I don’t wanna like pour salt into anything that happened before that was painful and both of us are coming from painful stuff and finding strength in each other now with Roadcase Royale. So this is the right time, the right thing to do. You know, we’ll be just exactly this inspired after the 8 weeks on the tourbus. […] I don’t know what Heart is anymore, yet. The first thing for me to want back is just my sister. And I want -you know- we know we love each other for ever and we’re unconditionally friends and -you know- good family members, but there is a lot of stuff that is so hard to fix. And especially when it is so deeply engrained in the family. So and the kids are involved and stuff like that. So -You know were working it out gradually. She was in Florida for the hurricane -she’s okay- their house is standing. But that’s sort of where we started actually texting back each other again. Cos. it’s Like -Are you okay, you know. So it’s like the bigger issues than just what’s gonna happen to the rock band.”
Sirius XM:
Sirius XM: Who between you has to decide for it to happen?
Nancy Wilson: “I think me, cos I think you can go out -you can try to be Heart without both of the sisters but it doesn’t exactly translate as Heart so I think it would probably be up to me to re-interpret the relationship between me and Ann to make Heart be Heart again.”
Added August 31st 2017: Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Have you and Ann made any future plans to reunite Heart?
Nancy Wilson: Right now, I don’t see that at all, unfortunately. There’s been some issues that we, as sisters, need to resolve between us way more than anything in the business that we could resolve still. So I’m looking forward to that. But for right now, I’m really excited and super inspired to start over with this new band, and we’re just about to embark on this first tour.
I’m really ready just to go out there and kick some ass. This is what I know that I need to be doing now and for about a year maybe, then reassess the original relationship and see where we get to with that.
Added August 30th 2017: RoadcaseRoyale.com: Nancy Wilson concurs. “You know,” she says, “doing this brand-new band after working with one rock group since I was 19, basically it’s been kind of an emotional and artistic lifesaver for me. And I never expected it. When we first got together to do Roadcase Royale, I thought, Oh, it’s just a side project. And now I’m thinking, maybe not so much. Now I’m thinking, This is my calling.”
Added August 10th 2017: Toledo Blade: She seems optimistic when asked if she sees herself performing with her sister again.
Ann: “I know we will some day in some way because we’ve played together all our lives, whether it was just as kids in our room at our parents’ house, or on big stages or whatever,” she said. “She’s an artist that I admire, and she’s always been a great collaborator. So right now, when we’re both taking our own artistic leave; it’s very, very good for us individually. When, and if, we come back together we’ll bring new stuff to that union.”
Added August 9th 2017: Yesterday, subscribers to the official heart-music.com email-list received an email (screenshot) consisting of two separate, but equal, parts about Roadcase Royale and Ann Wilson of Heart. The two solo-projects were (re-)introduced to the large Heart fanbase and the subscribers were invited to opt out of any future mails about either RR or AWoH. It seems an elegant way for them to both utilize the existing email-list and enlarging their exposure. Meanwhile, Heart’s official Twitter and Facebook have been silent since June 28th 2017 and the official store has been under construction for roughly the same period. Joining the fanclub or renewing membership has been disabled.
Added July 19th 2017: ClassicsDuJour:
Q: Finally, I’d like to close with this, Ann, and I’d like to preface my question with a very personal admission. I haven’t seen or spoken with my brother in over a decade. What’s the key, do you think, to getting back on the road home, as it were, to repairing the relationship with Nancy?
AW: Time. She needs to go out and do her own thing, and I need to go out and do my thing for a while. It was just getting too close. The room was too small. We are growing up. We both have our own families and our own marriages. I think time is the best answer.
Added June 24th 2017: Mercury News: Ann: “I know that Nancy and I will get back together,” she said. “Our lives will cross. But I also know for sure that Heart will never be that old way again. We’re in our second skin now.”
Added June 22nd 2017: Deseret News: Ann: “The main purpose (of the tour) is for me to stretch out and get to do something different, and begin to lead the evolution of Heart into cooler waters,” she said. “I’m doing exactly what I want to do, and it’s been so fun. We’ve been getting a fantastic response.”
Added June 20th 2017: Billboard: With Heart on hiatus indefinitely, Ann Wilson is plowing her own path on the road — and in the studio in the not-too-distant future. […] Heart, meanwhile, remains on ice after Wilson’s husband Dean Wetter pleaded guilty to assaulting her sister and Heartmate Nancy Wilson’s teenage twin sons last year backstage in suburban Seattle. But while that was the tipping point, Wilson says a schism was already in the offing. “It was already happening long, long before that, at least a couple of years before, and that was just the straw that got things moving forward,” Wilson acknowledges. “The last 10 years have been mostly constant touring, year-round with different packages. By the end of last year, I felt like I was being imported to do a job, but there wasn’t anything new about it. “I just went, ‘Well, I want to do something else for a while and see if I could get a breath and some distance and recapture my fire.” There’s no guarantee of a Heart return, either. “I really don’t know at this moment,” Wilson says. “But I do know for sure it will never be the way it was before. It will be something out of the box, moving forward and evolved — if it ever happens again.”
Added June 5th 2017: Ann at MyAJC:
Q: You’ve dealt with some family strife recently (in April, Wilson’s husband, Dean Wetter, received a suspended sentence in an assault case involving Nancy Wilson’s teen children on a tour bus in 2016), so what does this mean for your future and the future of Heart?
Ann: The family strife thing is long past. It resonated longer in the press than it needed to. Nancy and I are on an artistic walkabout now. We don’t have any plans beyond this year — we just want to see what happens. If and when we get back together, it won’t be the same old Heart thing, going around the country on a classic rock package (tour), it will be something fresh. We just want to live in the moment.
Added June 1st 2017:
To VintageRock Nancy said:
I know Heart is on hiatus for the time being. Anything you can say about the future of the band?
Right now, there’s an offer for a headlining 2018 summer tour. I’d be very happy to do that. Right now, I’m not sure what’s in Ann’s head about any of that right now. I’m just hoping for the best because Heart’s a great band and I like being in it. Ann’s sort of getting her other creative itch scratched right now, doing all different kinds of things other than the Heart type thing. I guess time will tell. I just have my fingers crossed for the summer of 2018.
Added May 31st 2017:
Nancy spoke to LA radiostation The Sound and said:
“There’s an offer on the table for the Summer of 2018 and I think we’re probably gonna be doing that. A big headlining tour.”
SouthFlorida.com: If the show also brings with it a “life is short” theme, Ann Wilson is tentative but not unwilling to discuss the possibility she and Nancy will be able to overcome the raw emotions that have divided them to allow for a future Heart tour. At least, she won’t rule it out.
“We’re going to be sisters long after there’s been a musical career. I don’t imagine that any kind of musical difference like what we’re having now will really matter in the grand scheme,” she says.
“We don’t have any plans for [a tour] in our minds right now. We don’t want a deadline. We’re just each doing our own thing right now and having a blast,” Wilson says. “It’s never going to be like it was before. Heart is always evolving. It’ll be something new. If it’s Heart, it’ll be something new, for sure.”
Yahoo.com: Heart’s always been sort of like a cockroach. You can set off a bomb, and it’ll still be alive underneath.” So says Ann Wilson. “We have no plans right now with Heart. We’re on creative walkabout. We’re both doing solo things this year… We need to let it breathe. We haven’t made any plans one way or the other.” “What Nancy and I are doing right now is we’re working on our friendship and on our sisterhood,” Ann tells Yahoo Music. “The band, that’s something else again. That’ll come and go and evolve and shape. But we’ll be sisters long after everything else is gone. So we’re working on our own relationship right now… Talking, letting water run under the bridge. Just cool down. Everybody chill.” “We’ve been sort of giving everything to [Heart] since we were in our early 20s,” she says. “That’s been the main focus of our lives. This is the first time we’ve decided to actually look away from it for a couple of minutes… I think that when and if Heart comes back together, in whatever form it comes back together in, it’ll be fresher.” But, she adds, “it’s never going to be like it was before… We’re both individuals, with each other and without each other, so that’s a really cool thing.” As for the future of Heart, Ann shrugs. “What’s important to me is love, especially that. What’s important to me is growing and evolving. But ultimately, what’s important to me is being real and being authentic. I’ve spent enough time in my life holding poses, playing roles… I think coming up with new songs that are real and relevant to this moment is what I’m about.”
HoustonPress: “We are definitely out of our comfort zone and for me, it’s fantastic fresh, and liberating. I can’t say anything negative about it – except for the money!” Wilson says. “But it’s really good for me, and I’m sure for Nancy.”
Added May 25th 2017: Journal-News.com: “(Heart) doesn’t have any plans at the moment,” Ann said. “We are on a walkabout. The solo tour will continue to nearly the end of the year. Then, my husband and I are going to travel and then come back home and just live and do other projects in our studio. That’s as far as I have it.”
Added May 24th 2017: Cincinnati.com
Q: Have you spoken to her recently?
Ann: Yeah.
Q: If you picked up the phone right now and said whatever Nancy needs to hear, would Heart be back together?
Ann: It’s not that simple. What’s going on right now is that Nancy and I have different ideas about what Heart should be. Anything else that’s happened that’s gotten lots of tabloid-y press is not happening anymore and that’s kind of not really what’s caused us to go on hiatus. It was a difference of opinion between Nancy and me about the music.
Q: All I read about was the incident. I was unaware that the hiatus is due to an artistic difference of opinion.
Ann: It really is, and that other thing that happened was unfortunate in its timing, because it makes it seem like a Jerry Springer-type event within a family. But that’s been taken care of. That’s all settled. It has been for a while. We just have to figure out how we can make it work, so that she likes it and I like it, because I’m not about to let the band go down in an old has-been-legacy-band blaze of un-glory. It’s not about that.
Q: If I’m reading between the lines, I’m guessing there are probably paydays out there for Heart, and Nancy might be interested in certain package tours or marketing efforts that you’re not?
Ann: Yes. Absolutely.
Q: How do you settle a disagreement involving two people? How do you break that tie?
Ann: Right now we’re taking a breather. We don’t have a tiebreak built into our partnership agreement, because we’ve never come to this point before. Now we need one, so we’ve got to figure that out.
Added May 20th 2017: Eddie Trunk: Ann: “I can’t say what’s gonna happen in the future with Heart. I know that it will never go back to the way it was exactly. We are artists and we’re sisters and the important thing is our relationship and we’re gonna deal with that before we deal with anything with the band or businesswise or anything like that. We’re friends and we’re sisters and that’s the important thing.”
Added May 17th 2017: TCPalm: “There’s nothing left but some of the malicious things that have been written,” Ann Wilson said. “That was one of the toughest things I’ve ever been through. But now my sister and I have our heads on right.”
Added May 16th 2017: ABC: Any updates about the Heart hiatus? AW: We haven’t got anything planned after this year. I’m touring all year long with my thing. We’re going to be going until November so that’s all I have planned right now. We didn’t want any big deadlines hanging over us.
Added April 22nd 2017: BestClassicsBands: You and Ann are currently going through a rough patch. Are you confident you will resolve your differences, and Heart will continue forward?
Nancy: In anybody’s story there’s going to be some low valleys—it’s called “life.” Life deals you some rough stuff once in a while. We’ve lived and worked through so many years together. It’s sort of like living in a submarine with your sister, your family and your band’s family. The main focus for me now is to concentrate on my relationship with Ann, to make sure we survive as friends and as sisters, together, more than focusing on the rock band Heart. Time is the ultimate healer. Right now it’s about regaining our balance as a family. Meanwhile I’m really excited and happy about Roadcase Royale. It’s a saving grace, really the only way I can emotionally get through this thing.
Added April 17th 2017: Mark Dean interviewed Nancy about Roadcase Royale and Nancy spoke about Heart’s hiatus as well: You know, right now, for the rest of this year, I know that I’m going to be really dedicated to Roadcase Royale. I know that Ann’s going to be really dedicated to her Ann Wilson of Heart thing. That’s fine, for now. I don’t have a crystal ball. I cannot give you what happens after that. I think it feels right for now the way it is. I guess, you know, time is the great tenure of all things next. […] Then, there’s another benefit called, Women’s Choice, where it’s celebrating strong, powerful women and we’re trying to jockey into position to be Roadcase Royale for that event, which was initially offered to Heart, but of course Heart does not exist at this time.
Added April 16th 2017: Here’s a vid, if you’re more into listening than reading.
Added April 15th 2017: Seattle PI: The husband of Seattle rock band Heart’s Ann Wilson was handed a suspended sentence Friday for reportedly choking Wilson’s twin nephews during a Heart show at White River Amphitheater in nearby Auburn. Those nephews were the 16-year-old children of Ann Wilson’s sister and co-founder of Heart, Nancy Wilson. Dean Wetter, 66, pleaded guilty March 9 to two counts of fourth-degree assault. He received a suspended sentence of 364 days in jail, meaning he will not serve any time. His plea agreement includes restitution, two years of probation, counseling and no contact with his nephews.
[ Added April 12th 2022: as the original article seems to have disappeared here are more Rolling Stone quotes via Inquisitr
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Ann said the incident involving her husband, Dean Wetter, and Nancy’s twin teen sons on a tour bus last summer was “overblown,” and now it has grown “this other head.” […] Court documents obtained by Rolling Stone included a police report that revealed Ann’s husband reportedly “became immediately upset” and began calling one of the teens names before slapping him on the back of the head and punching him with a closed fist. After Wetter allegedly grabbed the boy by the throat, Nancy Wilson’s other son intervened and their uncle reportedly turned on him by squeezing his throat to the point that he could not breathe. Ann Wilson’s husband was arrested and charged with two counts of assault, one felony, and one misdemeanor. While she was upset over the attack on her nephews, Ann Wilson said she feels that calling the police was “totally unnecessary.” Ann told Rolling Stone the issue could have “been worked out in a family meeting, but instead, it just went ballistic.” Ann Wilson married her husband in 2015, more than 30 years after they first met, and she says her sister “never really understood him.” “That had a lot to do with what happened,” Ann told Rolling Stone. “He was demonized before we even got married because he’s a free spirit. He’s completely blunt and honest and open. He holds nothing in reserve and that puts people off right there.” “Ann came up on my bus [after the incident] and said, ‘I guess Dean must have touched the children, and he’s sorry, but he had to lie down and take a nap,’” Nancy Wilson revealed. “I don’t think it was very cool of her to have to try to apologize and cover for him.” Ann Wilson claims her husband did try to apologize immediately after the assault, but “it was a scene where everyone in the Heart camp was sitting around” and no one would listen. [..] Ann and Nancy Wilson have not seen each other since Heart’s final show last October and they currently communicate only by text, but they are both hoping for reconciliation. Unfortunately, the singing sisters are still not on the same page regarding the assault or the aftermath. Ann Wilson stands by the assumption that her husband “was really provoked,” and says that when her sister can “look around and see that everything really is OK and that her boys were scared, but not hurt, harmed or even marked” then they can all get back together as a family. Ann added that she thinks the family should go to counseling. But Nancy Wilson says it’s not that simple. “As much as my sister would have liked to solve this as a family matter, it is categorically against the law not to report any violence against minors,” Wilson said in a statement. “The parents could face serious charges for not reporting.” While the assault has hurt the sisters’ relationship and Heart as a whole, Ann Wilson also revealed that she and Nancy haven’t had “a shared vision” for what they want for Heart for the past several years. “We didn’t want to see ourselves as an old, has-been legacy band just going out again and again to make the big bucks,” Ann said. “I saw that happening the last couple of years more and more. [Nancy] has a vision of playing the same old meat-and-potatoes set in Europe. It can just go on forever.” Ann Wilson says the wounds have to heal before they can think about Heart, although she clarifies that the band is not officially broken up. “I wouldn’t say it’s a ‘temporary hiatus,‘” Ann said of Heart’s current status. “I would say it’s a hiatus.” As for Nancy Wilson, she’s ready to find out from Ann “if we’ve still got Heart.” “I feel pretty positive that we do, but it’s been impossible to know that for a long time now,” Wilson said.
Earlier this month, Nancy Wilson told Billboard she had been hoping for a European summer tour with Heart, but her sister Ann wanted to “go in another direction.” Nancy also revealed that the matter with her sons is “still sorting itself out legally” and personally.
“When something like that happens inside a really tight family, it’s really scarring for everyone involved,” Wilson told Billboard. “There’s a lot of victims besides my own kids in the scenario. I think that’s part of the reason Ann wanted to take another direction, until that stuff’s more resolved. I hope it can [be resolved] and I think it will…I’m hoping for Heart to come back, and I’ve got my fingers crossed for that”
Added April 10th 2017: Ann & Nancy have opened up about recent events leading to their effective separation and Heart’s current hiatus in a long article on RollingStone.com. It is safe to say that things are much more dire than many of us thought. Here’s a selection of quotes from the article:
The Wilson sisters have not been in the same room since Heart’s final show of the tour last October – Nancy describes the relationship now as “pretty strained” – though they occasionally talk via text message. The assault put Ann in an unenviable scenario: Defend your husband or defend your sister. […] They managed to finish the tour, performing 20 more shows – Nancy calls them “excruciating“; Ann, “complete hell” – with the sisters, for the first time in their 43-year career, opting for separate dressing rooms and only communicating via third parties. Nancy considered walking away from the rest of the tour, requesting that Wetter not be allowed backstage, close to the stage or near her children.
“I’m an eternal optimist because I’m from a really strong, tight family, and I don’t think any drama that’s temporary is going to change our strong relationship,” says Nancy. “We just have to get through this first. It’s been kind of a nightmare.” Ann agrees with the sentiment, but adds that Nancy “feels Dean is a monster and is always on the attack.” “Dean is a Zen warrior; he’s not a fighter,” she says. “That was a really unfortunate situation that gave everyone the wrong impression about this guy. If she can look around and see that everything really is OK and that her boys were scared, but not hurt, harmed or even marked, then we’ll get back together as a family.” […] “Nancy and I love each other,” she says. “We want to be friends. My side really hurt her side. Her side really hurt my side. We’ve got to let those heal and get some counseling.” [added April 12th 2017: Inquisitr is quoting Nancy: “As much as my sister would have liked to solve this as a family matter, it is categorically against the law not to report any violence against minors,” Wilson said in a statement. “The parents could face serious charges for not reporting.”]
In an interview last month, Ann referred to Heart as being on a “temporary hiatus.” Asked if that is still accurate, she removes a key word. “I wouldn’t say it’s a ‘temporary hiatus.’ I would say it’s a hiatus,” she says, laughing. “We don’t need that little qualification right there.”
Still, both sisters insist the group hasn’t broken up. “I do see a positive way forward and that’s our friendship,” Ann says. “Nancy and I didn’t do this thing. We are each other’s friends and have been and will after this. Right now, we’re supporting each of our families. Nobody in this situation is evil. We have to be like trees that grow around the little imperfections.”
For Nancy, who appears to be the more optimistic of the two sisters, the “victory lap I was hoping to have this summer” is on hold, perhaps indefinitely, until “feelings all settle down and people can just be adults and talk to each other. “If [Dean] makes [Ann] happy, then I’m really glad for her,” she says. “Everyone makes mistakes. It’s been freaky and more negative than it needed to be, but I’m willing and ready to humanize it all and get back into a dialogue, with Ann in particular, about if we’ve still got Heart. I feel pretty positive that we do, but it’s been impossible to know that for a long time now. “It’s so unnecessarily competitive and those are the kind of destructive behaviors that harm big, positive relationships like me and Ann’s,” she adds. “I just know in my gut that me and Ann are going to be fine. We love each other and we’ve weathered all kinds of stuff in the past together no one would ever imagine and this is just one of those things. We just don’t need the high school drama swirling around the camp. We just need to talk to each other.”
Added April 6th 2017: Ann Wilson last week: “At the end of last year, I reached a point where I had to do something new. It was becoming mechanical for me. I just kind of walked out of that machine. It became obvious that it was just replicating.” The condition wasn’t serious enough that Heart shut down for good. “Heart is on hiatus,” said Wilson, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend. “Both Nancy and I needed a break. With regard to Heart, there is no breakup. But, there is also no deadline on starting up again.”
Added April 5th 2017: Audio clips of Nancy’s recent comments can now be heard here.
Added April 4th 2017: Nancy has spoken to Billboard Magazine in a similar interview as earlier today: An internal issue may also have played a role in Heart’s hiatus. Last Aug. 27 Ann Wilson’s husband Dean Wetter was arrested in suburban Seattle on charges of allegedly assaulting Nancy Wilson’s 16-year-old twin sons backstage at a Heart show. Nancy Wilson says the matter is “still sorting itself out legally” but has understandably created tension within the ranks.
“When something like that happens inside a really tight family, it’s really scarring for everyone involved. There’s a lot of victims besides my own kids in the scenario,” she says. “I think that’s part of the reason Ann wanted to take another direction, until that stuff’s more resolved. I hope it can [be resolved] and I think it will. Time is the healer. I’m just wishing and hoping for the best. The thing to do is go forward, and be positive and stay as affirmative about everything as possible.”
Heart will, of course, hang over anything the Wilson sisters do this year. Ann Wilson says that “we’re not going to give ourselves a deadline when we have to get back into Heart. We both need to go out there and venture.” Nancy Wilson, meanwhile, is looking forward to giving Roadcase Royale a good start. “I’m hoping for Heart to come back, and I’ve got my fingers crossed for that,” she says. “I’m always proud and interested to play with Heart, of course, but this is a Roadcase Royale summer for me, and I’m thrilled to be doing this. It’s so fulfilling.”
Added April 4th 2017: This new interview with Nancy has some insights Nancy hasn’t shared before. In the article “Heart on ice due to Wilson family tensions” the author first describes the reason for the family tensions and then quotes Nancy:
KSHE95: She admitted to us that she really wanted to be spending all summer on the road with Heart: “From the time Ann started to split off a little bit, I was trying to get this summer to be, kinda, ‘The summer of Heart,’ where we do the festivals and the Europe run — but she was on her different path, so, y’know. . . Y’know, right now, I’m hoping for Heart to come back and I’ve got my fingers crossed for that. But for this summer, I’m just thrilled to be doing this.”
We asked Nancy if she believes the issues with Ann’s husband and her two sons is the reason Heart is staying on ice for at least this touring cycle: “Well, yeah, I mean of course it would go down a little bit because — or a lot — because when something like that happens inside a really tight family, it’s really scarring for everyone involved and so there’s a lot of victims besides my own kids in the scenario. And it’s just sorting itself out legally now, so I think that’s part of the reason Ann wanted to take another direction until that stuff’s more resolved. I hope it can resolve, and I think it will resolve. Y’know, I’m just wishing and hoping for the best. I’ve got prayers aloft.”
Added April 2nd 2017: DCSpotlight.com:
Wendy Thompson: So what are you working on now, what are your fans, what can we look for in the future from you?
Ann Wilson: I’m going to tour all year. So I’ll be on the road until the end of October, I believe. And then after that my husband and I are going to travel. We’re going to go to India. We’re going to spend some time in Mexico. During that time, we’re going to decide what to do next year.
Added April 1st 2017: call.com: Question: Yeah, I was going to say, 45 years ago, could you imagine that you would still be here at this point? And do you guys have any plans to mark those anniversaries at all?
Ann: “We don’t have any plans for that right now. As I said, we’re pretty much in the moment. Um, yeah, Heart’s been together so long that it’s not just a band. It’s more like a life’s calling or something. But we will always honor it, and we’ll see what happens. “But all I can really concentrate on now is this thing I’m doing this year.”
Added March 25th 2017: The Eddie Trunk interview has been picked up by radio station i95 that has made a news article: “Is The Future Of Heart In Doubt“
Added March 23rd 2017: The below mentioned Eddie Trunk interview (added March 18th) is now available in full audio at this link as a podcast. Eddie reflects on the interview before he airs the interview. Only after the interview did he start connecting dots between what Nancy said and what has happened according to the press. The podcast features more of Nancy’s interview than the soundcloud below. If you don’t have any interest in Eddie’s views, just skip to the 15 minute mark. An interesting quote from Nancy: “She took the name, she took the logo, she went running off with those things”.
Added March 22nd 2017: Ann on WOTP: “At first, it was kind of hard getting people to understand that Heart’s still all right, but this is just me being me and stepping out on my own,” Wilson said. “Nancy’s doing that too this year. She has a little solo thing going called Roadcase Royale. So, we’re both just taking some deep breaths and doing it.” […] “This is my attempt at getting outside the box,” Wilson said. “It’s me coming out and displaying myself as a vulnerable artist outside of the Heart machinery, just to have a night with people. It’s kind of a brave thing to do, because everyone wants me to go out and recreate Heart. I do honor Heart — and I really want to do that — but this is me stepping out there bravely by myself. We’ll see what happens!”
Nancy at CrypticRock: “When times come around, for instance, recently, Ann needs more space from Heart and she needs to do something different from Heart. So I said, “Okay, too bad,” but I was kind of relying on Heart for my living this summer. But I got comfortable with it and I said, “Okay, take your space and I’m going to figure out my own space,” and I got my new band! So, actually it was a blessing in disguise.”
Added March 18th 2017: Nancy Wilson phoned in to SiriusXM to speak with Eddie Trunk. Click on Nancy Wilson talks to Eddie Trunk about Heart’s uncertain future — ‘TRUNK NATION’ on SiriusXM to listen. Read the transcript or listen below:
[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/siriusxmentertainment/nancy-wilson-talks-to-eddie-trunk-about-hearts-uncertain-future-trunk-nation-on-siriusxm[/soundcloud]
Eddie: “Is it a plan to come back together at some point? Where do you see this all going?”
Nancy: “You know, I guess only Ann’s hairdresser knows that for sure. Because I mean I was ready to go out this Summer and do festivals and do Europe. She got another idea. I can’t read her mind and answer that question. But ehm that’s what I’m hoping we could do. [..] I hope to be faced with the challenge of figuring out what Heart’s gonna do next. […] I apologize to the fans if there’s confusion for a little bit right now. But, I can’t even answer, so let’s keep our fingers crossed.”
Eddie: “So you’re rooting for it but it seems like it is a bit of a questionmark even for you as to how this is all gonna sort of wind up.”
Nancy: “Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. Yeah. we’re hoping for the best. [..] it would be nice if we had a victory lap with Heart another… maybe next Summer? I’d still really would like to get to the festivals and get to Europe with Heart. So it’s out there. I’m putting it out there! Let’s hope the universe will bring it back.”
Added March 17th 2017:
Added March 11th 2017: What’s Up Magazine: Ann: I want them to take away that Nancy and I are individuals and that she’s doing a solo thing too this year and as with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, they can go off and do their own thing as an artist. It’ll be interesting and fun. There’s more to Heart than just what’s in the heart box.
Added March 10th 2017:
Salina.com: After concluding a long tour last year, Wilson said she and sister Nancy decided to put Heart on temporary hiatus and explore other musical areas with different bands.
“There’s Heart with Nancy and me, and then there’s Nancy solo and myself solo,” Wilson said. “We’re different people, different souls, and there’s different ways our artistry can be conveyed. In this tour, audiences will see who I am as a person, out of the old box.”
Although she misses having her sister beside her onstage, Wilson said she wanted to try a different way of expressing herself as an artist “outside of the ‘Heart’ machine,” she said.
Added March 2nd 2017: Seattle Times: Ann says she doesn’t know when she and Nancy might reunite musically. Nancy has formed Roadcase Royale, with Prince protégé Liv Warfield as singer. They’ll likely play Seattle this year, too. As for “Ann Wilson of Heart,” as the band at the Moore will be billed, Ann says the Heart songs she’s sung for so long “have to evolve,” which is what she promises to explore onstage. “I’ve gotta go out and carve some new ground for Heart,” Wilson says.
Added March 1st 2017: OffBeat: Ann Wilson: […] You want to be there for it and keep working on it. But you also have to know when to give it some space. So this is one of those years where she and I take a breather. If and when we come back to Heart, we will do it because we really want to, not because we’re part of some big mechanism that says we have to make our nut.
Added February 21st 2017: KKLZ: Ann Wilson: “Right now Heart is on hiatus, and that’s all I know, really. Nancy’s doing a solo project this year, too, and we’re not gonna give ourselves a deadline when we have to get back into Heart. It’s just we both need to go out there and venture. That’s all I can say about it, really.” She adds that it’s important for the sisters to put Heart on hold periodically, especially after busy periods such as the last few years which saw the group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, publish a memoir and release a new studio album (last year’s Beautiful Broken) and several concert albums, including last year’s CD/video package Live at the Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Symphony. “You know, Heart was started back in the 70s in an atmosphere of super-high idealism about it being real and being authentic, and we’re really there. We mean it, and so I really don’t want to see it get to a point of being numb or automatic or just a cash cow…That’s just immoral to me.”
Added February 9th 2017: ABC: Meanwhile, Nancy wants to assure Heart fans that the band is “not over.” “A break is a healthy thing for somebody who lives in each other’s pockets for 40 years sometimes,” Wilson maintains. “I think we’re not done making a lot of noise quite yet.”
Added January 20th 2017: Nancy has released a press release about her side-project and she touches this subject; Wilson has said, ROADCASE ROYALE’s activity doesn’t mean Heart is going away. “ROADCASE ROYALE is a side project,” she notes, “and not a replacement for Heart.”
Added January 14th 2017: The official Heart Fan Club has emailed all members the following message:
In 2017, both Ann and Nancy will be embarking on solo projects outside of Heart. […] We will keep you updated about Heart’s 2017 plans as soon as more information becomes available. […] Please note that your Heart Fan Club membership is not associated with either of these side projects, so you will need to get info about pre-sales from each side project separately. Heart Fan Club Membership only includes pre-sales for Heart shows.
Added January 10th 2017: Adding a quote from Ann this time from her solo tour announcement today for “Ann Wilson of Heart”: “heart is always evolving, changing,” says ann. “it is a living organism. right now it’s in a cocoon of metamorphosis, and we will see what emerges when the time is right.”
Added January 9th 2017: Piecing information together, the appearance of both Ann & Nancy together on one stage under the name “Heart” is not expected by heartlinker.nl for the coming months.
January 6th 2017: iHeartRADIO published an article a couple of days ago about their perceived rift between Ann & Nancy these last months. Heartmongers have reacted in a lot of different ways while discussing on heartlinker.nl Facebook.
This website has been aware of many rumors among fans since the summer, many of those rumors are claimed to be from sources close to the band, but this article is by someone actually from the industry. That does make a difference.
Here’s the article:
This perceived rift might explain the lack of announced Heart tourdates this year. This last decade we’ve grown accustomed to having a whole list of dates before the year starts.
Looking at it objectively; the fanclub president has said that there are personal issues to be dealt with. But also both Ann & Nancy still classify The Ann Wilson Thing and Roadcase as their side-projects. Heartlinker.nl hopes that –if true– the Heart brand will only be sitting on cinder blocks in the back yard for a short while. Leaving you with this quote from Nancy referring to a Roadcase 2017 tour: “We’ll see where Heart lands after that”.
Added October 29th 2016: Heart’s management posted on the official bulletinboard in response to worried Heartmongers speculating about “Is the end near?”: No need to speculate. Everything is fine. The girls just ended a 9 month tour this year and last year. They are tired/exhausted. Yes – there’s some personal issues to work on but that’s their business – not anyone else’s and no need to gossip or speculate unless given strong reason to. Carry on folks – enjoy your winter and we should all expect to see the band out next year. Good night.
On October 26th 2016 Heart made a point and tweeted and posted on FB: Did you know that fan club members get first access to HEART tickets before the public? Join the #HeartMongers fan club today! heart-music.com/fanclub
October 22nd 2016: No news or tourdates have been issued by Ann & Nancy or their management. On October 22nd, the date of Heart’s last 2016 show, Ben Smith (Heart’s longtime drummer for 22 years) did a live video on Facebook. He did say that he thinks Heart will tour in 2017. Ben Smith said the following: “My understanding is that we’re gonna have some more big tour dates with Heart again. So that will be fun.” […] “Nancy is working on lots of scoring opportunities and she’s got some other music things going on that I won’t talk about today, but we’ll see what pops up later this Fall.” Ben Smith typed this later on: “Hey there, yes, I’m sure Heart will play next year!! I don’t know whom we will tour with or anything, but show will happen!”. He also made some remarks on returning to the UK.
Added December 2017: Ordinary pictures that now have a different value.
