We’d written a couple songs together with Gov’t Mule playing, and those rounded out the record. Wilson continues, “I’d known Warren Haynes from Gov’t Mule for a while.
He just played his butt off, and with the gospel singers and everything else coming together, the whole project just started to grow.” He was a whole other influence coming in. “At Sound Stage in Nashville, Kenny Wayne Shepherd came in and played on a couple songs. “I had originally intended to go in, record a few songs and see what I had, but it just took on this life,” remarks Wilson. With the musical chemistry organically established, Fierce Bliss came together quickly. I’d never met them before, and they really inspired me. “Brian recommended people to me that knew people in Nashville, so I met these guys like Tom Bukovac and Tony Lucido at those Muscle Shoals Sound Studio sessions. Fast forward to Summer 2020, and a meeting with legendary veteran ‘artist’s lawyer’ Brian Rohan provided the catalyst for Fierce Bliss’s creation. During a decades-long career, Wilson rode the roller coaster of fame, fortune and madness, learning both joyous and hard, hard lessons along the way. One of the premier hard rock vocalists of all-time, Wilson smashed boundaries with her band Heart, the 8-times Platinum, 35 million-plus selling Rock and Roll Hall of Fame trailblazers who formed in 1973.
It’s an aggressive song and I think I write best when I’m angry.” I think everybody who ventures into especially the music industry hoping for a career with big success, ends up making these Faustian bargains at some point even if only briefly. Wilson continues “I think people who claim to have made every decision from a root of pure idealism, and never done anything dark or greedy, is lying. When you turn around and catch yourself making decisions because you want the money, or because you’re caught in the headlights of glory, well, those are greedy moments.” “Whether it be money, sex, power or ecstasy, it fires our craving! It happens with all of us. Take ‘Greed’, the powerful first single… “’Greed’ is that thing in our animal nature that makes us want MORE,” Wilson declares. Perhaps that is why the soul (and, indeed title) of her latest album, Fierce Bliss (set for release April 29 via Silver Lining Music) offers such universally entertaining, engaging, honest and safe harbor from these unpredictable times.
She feels like a warm, wise someone who has seen enough bullshit to know how to avoid it calmly, and someone who is at peace with whatever she needs to be at peace with. There is a calm, serene spirituality about Ann Wilson in 2022 which instantly draws you to her.