 Gretchen Wilson was born on June 26, 1973, and raised in rural Pocahontas,
Ill., 36 miles due east of St. Louis, where numerous trailer parks are clustered
among cornfields and pig farms. Her mother was 16 years old when she had
Gretchen, and her
father, unfortunately, had moved on with his life by the time she was 2.
Whenever they couldn't make rent, which was every few months, they packed up
what little belongings they owned and moved down the road only to find yet
another trailer.
With only an eighth-grade education, she was cooking and tending bar at Big
O's, a rough-and-tumble bar five miles outside of town, alongside her mom at age
14. A year later and living on her own, she was managing the roughneck joint
with a loaded 12-gauge double-barrel shotgun stashed behind the bar for
protection.
The father she never really knew provided her with the musical talent to
sing. "My dad just picked around on the guitar and has a quiet voice,"
Gretchen Wilson
says. She made it a point to meet him for the first time when she was 12. "His
family, I'm told, had a little traveling band. I think it was a gospel band." In
any case, from an early age she could sing. Long before karaoke machines, she
got up on stage every night at Big O's with a microphone and sang along to
various CDs for tips. Gretchen Wilson soon found herself fronting a cover band and for the
first time she felt like maybe there was a life for her outside Bond County. She
moved to Nashville in 1996.
Gretchen Wilson became somewhat discouraged after a brief encounter with a local
musician, whom she happened to recognize at a Nashville music shop. She asked
for advice, and he said she needed to create a buzz. It would take her four long
years to figure out what he meant. In the meantime, she got a job slinging
drinks at a bar in Printers Alley.
A few years later, and now with a daughter, she still had no luck in terms of
getting a record deal. One Friday night, singer-songwriters Big Kenny and John
Rich (of Big & Rich) walked into the bar and heard her sing with the house band.
Gretchen Wilson remembers, "John followed me up to my little cubby hole bar upstairs with
his trench coat and cowboy hat and I think his exact words were, 'Hey, how come
you ain't got a record deal yet?' I looked at him in disgust ... threw him a
business card and a little homemade demo and said, 'I'm busy. I'm working right
now.'"
For months he tried getting in touch with her, and for months she ignored his
calls until someone finally said, "Look, you should really return his call. He
might be able to help you out." He not only introduced her to his circle of
friends -- "they started to use me singing on some demos" -- but he also taught
her how the Nashville songwriting community really works. Gretchen Wilson also became a
member of the Muzik Mafia, a loose-knit group of singers, songwriters and
musicians who get together to jam (and party) every Tuesday in a local Nashville
nightspot. It was in front of her peers -- very honest peers -- that Gretchen
Wilson honed
her songwriting style. She later signed with Sony Music Nashville.
Gretchen Wilson's debut 2004 debut album, Here for the Party was certified
quadruple platinum for shipments of more than 4 million copies. Her second
album, All Jacked Up, is set for release in September 2005.
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