Here are some bits of Heart’s new info-page on their Facebook! Click here the read the entire piece.
Kicking & Dreaming: “When you’re pushing sixty you know what you want and you go for it,” Nancy says. “You’re not going to test it out for five or ten years, you’re going to get in the car and drive.” […] In 2010 the band returned to the Billboard Top 10 with the release of Red Velvet Car and a Top 5 DVD Night at Sky Church. The subsequent tour reinvigorated the sister’s taste for live performance and life on the road but as they looked forward to recording another record, something seemed to be in the way: their past. For years friends and colleagues had been asking the sisters to do a book about Heart and it just didn’t feel right. “They always came to us with a real lascivious tabloid-y type idea,” Ann says. “You know – think of the ugliness and the dirtiness – but that’s so one dimensional. We’ve had moments of failure and vulnerability and humiliation, sure, but ours is also the story of women who are being told there are rules to follow and just won’t do it.” […]Once they knew the book was happening, in typical Wilson sister fashion they didn’t hold back. “There’s really no point in going through all of this if you’re going to write a white wash – we really hung ourselves out there,” Ann says. Nancy agrees “I started talking about the book with Charley while I was going through a divorce, which was really hard, but later I was able to have the objectivity to come at the entire book from a healed sort of place. We don’t leave much unsaid.”
Fanatic: Between the book and the box set, the Wilson sisters had fully exorcized the past and now it was time to think about the future; they started writing songs that would become Fanatic. “We did it every possible way,” Nancy remembers. “We had many nights together on the tour bus. Then, when I was in LA and Ann was in Seattle we were each emailing each other lyrics ideas and [producer] Ben Mink groove ideas.” The threesome eventually congregated in the sister’s hometown outside of Seattle and had a series of what Nancy calls songwriting “pow wows.” When it came time to record, the band’s approach was organic, very much in keeping with their roots as true performance oriented rock band. “These days things are formulated digitally or layered or looped and assembled but this is live groove,” Nancy explains. “It was our mission to go in there and capture the energy as it magically happens without too much over-thinking or repetition, just letting it escape.” When you put the Wilson sisters plus some trusted musicians in a room with instructions to feel their way around, great things happen. “You do a take and you listen and you go that’s so great, but that’s not the one, and then you go and have a snack and keep going and suddenly it’s like everybody’s hair goes up and it’s like: that’s the one!” Nancy says with glee. From the crackling guitar noise and vicious drumbeat that drives album opener and title track “Fanatic” through the scorched-earth power of tracks like the “Mashallah” Fanatic is definitely a full-bodied American rock and roll record. “I place it really highly among the albums we’ve made, right along side Little Queen or Dog & Butterfly,” Nancy says. “Those are two really heavy hitting albums and this one has that same spark.” But the record’s power is nuanced. “Million Miles,” has delectably ominous prog rock undertones, the collaboration with Sarah McLachlan, “Walkin’ Good,” has a sweet folky delicacy, and “Pennsylvania” is a poetic painting of a ballad. Among the album’s stand outs is also “Dear Old America,” which blends Heart’s signature rollicking rock and roll guitars with poignant lyrics about soldiers coming home from war, a topic close to both sisters’ hearts since they were born and raised as Marine corps brats. As it should, the title track most succinctly encapsulates the spirit of Fanatic. “I thought of Nancy who is so devoted to the idea of love and especially to the idea of romantic love,” Ann recalls. “She will not take no for an answer. There is no way you could ever convince her that it’s not real. She will not hear it. She’s a true fanatic about love, and I thought how cool and inspiring is that? The meaning then grows to become a worldview.”
And here’s more about “Kicking & Dreaming” from the publisher: In these pages, readers will learn the truth about the relationship that inspired “Magic Man” and “Crazy On You,” the turmoil of inter-band romances gone awry, the reality of life on the road as single women and then as mothers of small children, and the thrill of performing and in some cases partying with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Stevie Nicks, Van Halen, Def Leppard, and other rock legends. It has not always been an easy path. Ann struggled with and triumphed over a childhood stutter, body image, and alcoholism; Nancy suffered the pain and disappointment of fertility issues and a failed marriage but ultimately found love again and happiness as a mom. Through it all, the sisters drew from the strength of a family bond that trumps everything else, as told in this intimate, honest, and uniquely female take on the rock and roll life.
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