Wynonna Judd's early life is another C&W tale of living off the clippings of tin, and doing the best you can until something better comes along. When I say to her that her past would make a great novel, she guffaws and says, all sassy-like: "You know what, honey? The saga continues."
Recently divorced, and now a single mother with two young children (home, mind, is a farm in a 1,000-acre valley she shares with her mother, Naomi - just splitting from her second husband - and sister, the Hollywood actress Ashley), Wynonna Judd is going through a period of transition. She's at pains to tell The Irish Times that she's a rebel, she rides a Harley, and that she calls her solo career Wynonna Alona. "Fifteen minutes of fame? I've had 45 . . . I'm going to sit at home and breathe and just watch my kids (Elijah and Grace) grow up. I don't know what I'm going to do next. I need time to think about reinventing myself."
It is far from a 1,000-acre valley that the Judds have come. When mother Naomi divorced her first husband, she took her two daughters from California back to her home state of Kentucky, and, when Wynonna expressed an interest in being a professional entertainer, from there to Nashville.
"We lived in genteel poverty," says Wynonna (real name Christina Claire - Wynonna comes from the song Route 66). "My mother was always a very colourful, passionate, dramatic gypsy. We lived in a lot of different places and cultures. The reason why Mom was able to raise two women who are both successful in their field is that she really gave us a sense of roots and wings. If you have those and you have a sense of self, then you're fine. We didn't have money, we were on welfare and every month we'd get our voucher book for food. That's the way we lived our lives, in a one-bedroom apartment. Mom was always working two/three jobs. I always remember her being gone from the house, with just Ashley and me in the apartment. We were two kids against the world and Mom was this incredibly adventurous spirit."
Most people, reckons Wynonna somewhat dramatically, looked upon the Judd family (or at least the children) as fools living in a fantasy-driven world. When they arrived in Nashville in a red '57 Chevy - which Wynonna still owns - they lived in a cockroach-infested motel and Naomi worked on Music Row as a secretary. Yet Wynonna says she knew she had been given the gift of a voice. The purity of her vision of success only made it stronger. With Ashley following her own dream to Hollywood, Naomi and Wynonna joined together, soliciting an audition in the boardroom of RCA records in the early 1980s. The first of more than two dozen hits and an avalanche of awards followed. In the early 1990s, Naomi was forced to retire when she contracted hepatitis C, leaving Wynonna to step out on her own.
The homespun new traditionalism of The Judds material was jettisoned for a slick but effective C&W/R&B hybrid that pre-dated the likes of Shelby Lynne and, to some extent, Sheryl Crow. Earlier this year, Naomi and Wynonna toured to acclaim tinted with nostalgia. But times, and the status of country music, says Wynonna, have changed.
"My mother recently said that the only thing constant in this life is change, and from year to year I've noticed that the older I get, the crazier I feel, because I don't feel to be fitting into the norm. Where country music is today is a place where we disregard our elders. I'm definitely in the middle-age bracket at this point, and I feel like my elders in country music have been forgotten. Yet women in country music are definitely rockin'. The sisterhood in country music is the best it's ever been - we're selling more than ever. But what's happening to women like me, who are definitely left-of-centre, is that it's hard to fit into the commercial format. It makes me stronger because it makes me fight harder to strive for what I believe in. Quite frankly, music today is going to the young and the restless, and the folks like me are on the receiving end of that.
"I feel that country music is a little confused. Years ago, the marketing money would be behind a few acts. Now it's stretched. It's now hard to turn on the radio and know who the voice belongs to. Today we are one-hit wonders. We want success overnight, drive-thru service. There are no artists being discovered. My question to newcomers is how much of what you do is a marketing strategy? I miss the days when I knew for sure that Merle Haggard was Merle Haggard, when I knew that George Strait was a cowboy. I question whether some of these men today are cowboys. I wanna check their fingernails and the calluses on their hands."
What can any artist do about that? Wynonna knows what she wants to do: "I'm starting my own country - do you wanna come? I continue to be a rebel, I strive very hard to form my own niche. My mother said it best recently: I'm in the space between two worlds. I've always loved my roots, in The Judds and country music, but I'm looking to the future.
"I'm in a state of purgatory right now, because I sense I'm changing and growing and expanding my horizons, yet in country music they want me to fit into a little box. I've been trying to put a term on what it is I do, and I think it's Wynonna Country. I have to fight really hard to get away with what I've been getting away with. There's a prejudice about rebels like me, and people are very unsure about what to do with me. I see that as a compliment."
The choices Wynonna is making now are nudging her out of Nashville. But that's OK, she says, because she knows where her heart is: "It's in country music. I feel I have the right after 18 years to sing what I want to sing, be it a Joni Mitchell song or with a rock'n'roll band. That's appropriate for me as an artist. For the people who want to categorise me - good luck."
Wynonna Judd plays Dublin's Vicar Street next Friday
