NEW YORK (AP) — It’s late July. Lainey Wilson is somewhere in Iowa, holding a real road dog — her French bulldog named Hippie — close to her chest. She’s on her tour bus, zipping across the Midwest, just another day in her jet set lifestyle. Next month, she’ll release her fifth studio album, the aptly named “Whirlwind,” a full decade after her debut record. Today, like every day, she’s just trying to enjoy the ride.
“It’s been a journey,” she reflects on her career. “I’ve been in Nashville for 13 years and I tell people I’m like, it feels like I got there yesterday, but I also feel like I’ve been there my whole life.”
Wilson is a fast talker and a slow success story. She grew up on a farm in rural Baskin, Louisiana. As a teenager, she worked as a Hannah Montana impersonator; when she got to Nashville in early adulthood, she lived in a camper trailer and hit countless open mic nights, trying to make it in Music City. It paid off, but it took time, really launching with the release of her 2020 single, “Things a Man Oughta Know,” and her last album, 2022’s “Bell Bottom Country” — a rollicking country-rock record that encompasses Wilson’s unique “country with a flare” attitude.
“I had always heard that Nashville was a 10-year town. And I believe ‘Things a Man Oughta Know’ went No. 1, like, 10 years and a day after being there,” she recalls. “I should have had moments where I should have packed it up and went home. I should have went back to Louisiana. But I never had those feelings. I think there’s something really beautiful about being naive. And, since I was a little girl, I’ve always had stars in my eyes.”
These days, she’s a Grammy winner, the first woman to win entertainer of the year at the CMAs since Taylor Swift in 2011 (she took home the same award from the Academy of Country Music), she’s acted in the hit television show “Yellowstone” and in June, she was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry.
“I was 9 years old when I went to the Opry for the first time. I remember who was playing. It was Little Jimmy Dickens, Bill Anderson, Crystal Gayle, Phil Vassar, and I remember where I was sitting. I remember looking at the circle on stage and being like, ‘Man, I’m going to, I’m going to play there. I’m gonna do this,'” she recalls.
Becoming a member is the stuff dreams are made of, and naturally, it connects back to the album.
“The word that I could use to describe the last couple of years is whirlwind,” she says. “I feel like my life has changed a whole lot. But I still feel like the same old girl trying to keep one foot on the ground.”
“And so, I think it’s just about grasping on to those things that that truly make me, me and the artist where I can tell stories to relate to folks.”
If Wilson’s life looks different now than it did a decade ago, those years of hard work have created an ability to translate the madness of her life and career to that of everyone else’s: Like on “Good Horses,” the sole collaboration on “Whirlwind.” It features Miranda Lambert, and was written on Lambert’s farm, an uplifting track about both chasing dreams and coming home. Or “Hang Tight Honey,” an ode to those who work hard for the ones they love.
Wilson has leveled up on this record, bringing writers out on the road with her as she continued to tour endlessly. That’s evident on the sonic experiment of “Ring Finger,” a funky country-rock number with electro-spoken word.
Or “Country’s Cool Again,” a joyous treatise on the genre and Western wear’s current dominance in the cultural zeitgeist.
“I think country music brings you home,” she says of its popularity. “And everybody wants to feel at home.”
Here on the back of the bus, Wilson is far from home — as she often is. But it is always on the mind, the place that acts as a refuge on “Whirlwind.” And that’s something everyone can relate to.
“I hope it brings a little bit of peace to just everyday chaos, because we all deal with it,” she says of the album. “Everybody looks different, but we all put our britches on the same one leg at a time, you know?”