Legendary Heart musician Nancy Wilson talks "sweet" return to touring

Legendary Heart musician Nancy Wilson talks 'sweet' return to touring

Legendary rock band Heart will launch the latest leg of its Royal Flush Tour at Duluth's Gas South Arena on Sunday, February 15th.

ATLANTA, Ga. - "I love singing, and I love harmony singing most of all, but guitar playing is something that I was definitely born to do."

Truer words were never spoken.

Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson rocketed to stardom alongside her sister Ann when "Dreamboat Annie" was released back in 1975. The pioneering rock band went on to score hit after hit — but didn't reach Number One on the Billboard Hot 100 until 1986, when "These Dreams" climbed to the top and became one of their signature songs. 

"I had to fight to be able to sing that song," says Nancy Wilson, who handles lead vocals on the hit.  "I still love doing that song when we play live. I mean, it’s one real pretty song. It’s a great love song."

Listen to "These Dreams" today, and you'll hear something of a rasp in Wilson's voice. The musician says it wasn't intentional...at least, not at first.

"We were doing the mock vocals, and I was sitting in a little isolation booth, and I had a pretty bad cold. But I was singing the guide lead track — just the mock vocal, a guide vocal. It turned out that when we did the real vocals later, they kind of missed the sound of my vocal when I had the cold! So, we added some of that back in."

"These Dreams" is one of a long list of hits — also including songs like "Alone," "What About Love," "Barracuda," and "Magic Man" — that Heart plans to perform on the latest leg of its Royal Flush Tour. That leg launches at Duluth's Gas South Arena.

"I think this particular time in Heart’s legacy is a really sweet, especially sweet time," says Nancy Wilson. "Because we didn’t know — when we stalled out last year when Ann had a cancer diagnosis, and then we had to kind of postpone everything for a while — we didn’t know if we’d ever be able to come back out and do it."

Heart will take the stage at Gas South Arena at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, February 15th – doors open an hour earlier, and tickets start at $55.29. For more information on the show, click here. And click the video player in this article to hear more of our interview with the legendary Nancy Wilson.