Heart-Breaking Wilson Sisters Choose Music Over Tour Profits

Take the money and run, or take a risk.

Those were options facing Ann and Nancy Wilson when they were setting up a 1999 summer tour.

The lucrative option was to reactivate Heart. Resurrecting the Seattle rock band would have been the safer, more profitable choice, given that Heart has sold some 29 million albums worldwide since its 1976 debut, “Dreamboat Annie.”

Instead, the Wilsons decided to tour for the first time as a stripped-down duo. Their tour, which stops Friday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, Saturday at the Ventura Theatre and Wednesday at the El Rey Theatre, is an intimate acoustic affair that stresses storytelling.

“We’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time, but for one reason or another it never came together,” said Ann Wilson, 49.

For one thing, she said, “we weren’t ready emotionally. When you go out on stage with just one other person in front of a lot of people, you really have to be united. Before, either Nancy wasn’t confident enough or I wasn’t confident enough.”

Pre-tour jitters faded soon after they began performing two months ago, she says, and the relaxed setting has allowed their personalities to shine through on stage like never before.

The Wilsons make a point of explaining the origins of songs. This has proven particularly valuable in drawing listeners into new songs, Ann says, including a new number, “Nothing but Love,” she wrote with veteran composer Burt Bacharach.

Their set also embraces plenty of Heart material, although the hard-rocking “Barracuda” and the glossy power ballad “These Dreams” have been transformed into far sparser songs. The sisters also include a few obscure Heart numbers, a handful of covers such as John Lennon’s “Mother,” and one song from Nancy’s recent solo album, “Live at McCabe’s.” After the tour ends later this month, they plan to record this material for a duet album.

Ann is quick to note that this tour is more than “two women sitting on stools playing acoustic guitars and yodeling.” The Wilsons present an array of instrumental textures on stage. Nancy plays electric and acoustic guitars, mandolin, dulcimer, dobro, harmonica, bass and piano. Lead singer Ann plays bass, rhythm guitar, piano and flute.

Both the tour and the planned album are about reclaiming Heart’s original spirit of musical independence. When the group emerged in the mid-’70s, it mixed biting electric rockers with fetching acoustic ballads, mostly written by the Wilsons.

The band released numerous hit albums and singles, but fell out of fashion in the early ‘80s. It bounced back in 1985 with “Heart”--the band’s first album to reach No. 1--and two follow-ups full of heavily produced commercial rock.

The band grew more popular than ever, but the Wilsons felt they lost some of their musical soul.

“People don’t understand that everyone in the band had to like the songs that were on our albums,” says Ann, the single mother of an 8-year-old daughter and a 1-year-old son. “Nancy and I couldn’t just force our songs on everybody. So many times our songs were outvoted by the other band members. . . .

“Radio was very corporate and a radio song had to sound a certain way,” she adds. “All of a sudden these songs from all these great songwriters like Diane Warren started dropping in on us. We had hits with them, but the end result was we felt frustrated because our own songs [weren’t being heard].”

Ann also began to suffer from stage fright, which she attributes to the pressures of nonstop touring and criticism about her weight from some in the Heart camp who felt her appearance was keeping the band from becoming even more popular.

Forming the quartet the Lovemongers in 1991 helped reestablish her confidence, she says. The acoustic-oriented group released a four-song EP in 1992, a full-length album in 1997 titled “Whirlygig” and a Christmas album last year.

Meanwhile, Heart hasn’t released an album of new music since 1993; that band’s most recent album is 1995’s “The Road Home,” a collection of live acoustic versions of old Heart songs.

“The Lovemongers was very much under the radar,” Ann says. “That was done just for the joy of it. But we’re approaching this [forthcoming duet] album just like a Heart album. We really want people to hear it.”

BE THERE

Ann and Nancy Wilson, Friday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. 8 p.m. $42 to $57. (562) 916-8510. Also Saturday at the Ventura Theatre, 26 S. Chestnut St., Ventura. 8 p.m. $28 and $48. (805) 639-3965; Wednesday at the El Rey Theatre, 5515 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. $40. (323) 936-4790.

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“When you go out on stage with just one other person in front of a lot of people, you really have to be united. Before, either Nancy wasn’t confident enough or I wasn’t confident enough.” ANN WILSON