‘Ann Wilson of Heart’ solo tour comes to D.C.

Most of us are fortunate to have separate work and family lives. But when your name is Ann Wilson, whose sister Nancy has played guitar next to the Heart frontwoman for decades, you have to know where the boundary between business and blood lies.

“The family is private, and we don’t go flashing it around in the band,” Miss Wilson told The Washington Times. “When Nancy and I need a break from each other, we love each other enough to just say, ’Yeah, let’s take a break and just breathe.’”

Ann Wilson is taking a break from her sister of another kind, with her solo tour, called “Ann Wilson of Heart,” which comes to the Maryland Hall for the Performing Arts in Annapolis, Maryland, Sunday and The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, Wednesday.

While audiences can expect Miss Wilson to bring her arena-filling soprano voice to renditions of some Heart songs, she says the shows will feature more of her own, more personal compositions as well as some tunes that inspired her over the years.

“Most of the [songs] are covers that I really, really love [and] that really inspire me, and new songs that I’ve written,” she said. “And maybe about half Heart” songs, which she said will be “re-envisioned and rebirthed” in her solo interpretation. “It’s not just another version of the same old thing.”

The Wilson sisters’ early years were spent moving about thanks to their father’s military career. The family settled in Seattle in the 1960s, where Ann and Nancy began consuming, at first, their parents’ music like Harry Belafonte, Judy Garland and Ray Charles.

“Our parents really did have a lot of music on all the time,” Miss Wilson recalls of her youth, “so we were pretty well versed in different genres by the time we got to our teens. So to me it’s not unusual to listen to any kind of music.”

Long before the grunge invasion of the ’90s — before, as Miss Wilson puts it, it was “hip to be Seattle” — Seattle had long enjoyed a musical identity all its own, with Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ray Charles and Jimi Hendrix all finding traction there. Quincy Jones worked on his songwriting skills in Washington state’s largest city, drawing on the strong influence of jazz, blues and soul that permeated the clubs along Puget Sound.

“It’s always been a really rugged, blues-out, completely soulful music town,” Miss Wilson said of Seattle. “I don’t think it’s changed all that much. Whatever genre is big at the moment, [Seattle] is always the same.”

Miss Wilson cites Aretha Franklin and Ann Peebles as her inspirations while finding her own voice as Heart’s dynamic vocalist. The band, formed in the Pacific Northwest, broke through in the ’70s thanks to classic rock staples like “Crazy on You,” “Barracuda” and “Magic Man.”

Heart’s success enabled Miss Wilson to talk shop with some of her own musical heroes.

“The image that is portrayed to us plebes about these people is being godlike,” she said of meeting her idols, “but when you meet them, you see they’re just people. They have this talent and this ability [and] hard work that caused them to be where they are.

“But they’re all just people. They all have their weaknesses and their funny parts,” she said, laughing.

The band’s label put pressure on Miss Wilson to lose weight during their 1980s comeback, and frequently framed her in music videos so as to disguise her figure.

“Look at someone like Adele, who is really beautiful and supremely talented and still gets flak for some minor flaws about herself,” Miss Wilson said of the English artist, who, despite being arguably the most popular singer in the world, has nonetheless faced unkind scrutiny over her size. “She is a good example of somebody who just goes on with it” regardless of the criticisms, Miss Wilson said.

She advises young women in the entertainment industry now to accept themselves as is and not listen to those trying to shape an image for maximal profit.

“You tell them that they are beautiful and that they’re entering into an” image-conscious industry, she said, “and so they are going to come up against a lot of flak.”

Miss Wilson doesn’t drink or smoke, and otherwise tries to stay healthy as a way to keep her voice tip-top. She warms up her vocal chords before every show so as “not to screech.”

“Your throat is a key part of your body. It needs to be respected and taken care of,” she said.

Miss Wilson is looking forward to performing for the “sensitive, intelligent” audiences she often finds in the capital region. On one of her previous trips here, she brought down the house at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors with a rendition of “Stairway to Heaven” that even gave honoree Robert Plant tears.

“He said, ’You know, I usually hate when people cover ’Stairway to Heaven’ because they always screw it up,’” Miss Wilson said the Led Zeppelin singer told her following the ceremony. “But he said, ’I liked your version of it.’

“I just thought ’phew,’” she said, letting out a hearty laugh.

Miss Wilson spends a substantial part of her year on tour — whether with Heart or solo. When asked if there is one thing she absolutely must have when she travels, she responds: “I have to have my cosmetic, skin care regime all the time.”

“There’s no leaving that behind,” she said, adding that a hairdresser and a makeup artist are part of her tour coterie. “I keep myself all pulled together on stage and on the road,” she said.

Even with such a lengthy career and so many accomplishments to her credit, Miss Wilson still has goals — even if they are just to see what each day afore her may bring.

“For me goals are daily. I just say today I’m going to be here,” she said. “Because I might not be here tomorrow. I mean that sounds trite, but that’s how it is. So I really try to stay out of the future.”