Name Ann Wilson

Best known for Striding the stage as a “Raven-haired, Rock and Roll Banshee.”

Current city Tukwila, Washington.

Really want to be in Montreal. It would be snowing and I would be wrapped in real fur eating soupe a l’oignon on the sidewalk….listening to music pouring out of the doorways.

Excited about A whole bunch of new songs written during quarantine I am recording now. Planning new tours and gigs in 2021-2022.
My husband.
My dogs.

My current music collection has a lot of Meditational/World, Todd Norian, Benjy Wertheimer, Djivan Gasparyan.

And a little bit of Vintage soul. Classic Rock.

Don’t judge me for Antoine Dodson —“Bed Intruder Song.”

Preferred format I like vinyl, of course. It sounds best!

5 Albums I Can’t Live Without:

1

Blackstar
David Bowie

I love this album because it is so brave and poetic. I feel this album is his most cutting edge. All through his career, Bowie took on various status quos including the rules of fashion, middle-of-the-road musical styles and gender fluidity. I feel on Blackstar he challenges the most immutable law of all: mortality.

The album is haunting and wide awake as he ponders his own demise and invents a new religion with the relic of Major Tom as its mythological deity. Musically, it’s Bowie’s most sophisticated work. He allows the breezes of modern jazz to blow through the open window of his soul.

2

Hejira
Joni Mitchell

I love this album like I love a lifelong friend. On Hejira, Joni is a grown woman, a free agent, traveling solo. The songs are full of the rich imagery of the things and people she encounters and interlaced with her poetic, unforgiving introspections.

Musically, Hejira reaches new heights; again letting jazzy time signatures and voices ride shotgun with her signature guitar tunings. It’s Joni on electric being played like an acoustic and it’s a first.

This album does not age. Rather, it unfolds with time.

3

Perfect Day
Chris Whitley

I love this album because it is so intimate. Chris’s tangled, smoky vulnerability is wide open here and there is no effort made to pretty things up with production. Rather, there is nearly no production at all save for a kind of 4 am, relaxed and buzzed atmosphere. This is a covers album that I believe really takes the versions somewhere wonderful.

As a singer, he is in my top four of all time and I love hearing him this naked. You can feel him right through the skin to the bone and all the way down to the soul.

This is another album that doesn’t age and hardly knows which genre to call home. I like that.

4

Essence
Lucinda Williams

I love this album because it’s the perfect marriage of unpretentiousness, honesty and badassery. I love me some Lucinda and Essence is full of her best songwriting and singing. Tattered, torn and honest she is. Such a welcome relief from female singer/songwriters as Kardashian/warrior/ Barbies who just want to show you how hyper-sexual and badass they are. Watch out…Lucinda actually IS a badass who’s also a “Broken Butterfly” and a “Raven with a touch of blue glistening down her back”. Then she tells you off in no uncertain terms. All this is accomplished in her conversational, breathing, moaning singing style with lots of edge and a good dose of fuck you.

What more can I say, Lu is my kind of gal.

5

Quadrophenia
The Who

I love this album because I feel it’s The Who with all cylinders firing. Don’t hate me for not thinking Tommy was the one. I just feel Quadrophenia has more depth; more beauty…it has it all. This music and story of alienation feels to me like Pete Townsend and the lads could really relate close up and so can I. The songwriting is iconic and shows a band at the apex of their development. “Love, Reign o’er Me” and “The Real Me” alone are worth the price of admission and the whole piece is a beauty, full of power, poetry and “Who-ness.”

All my favorite albums are timeless and ageless and this is another. I could listen to Quadrophenia all my life.