Redneck momentum derailed at Union Station

Gretchen Wilson’s speeding pickup truck blew all four of its tires at Wednesday’s Grammy ceremony, where voters found all manner of ways around the Nashville upstart’s campaign to make country music safe for tobacco-spittin’, beer-drinkin’, independent-minded women with attitude.

Wilson stormed out of the trailer parks in 2004 as a self-styled redneck woman, overcoming record-label resistance and restoring to the music its rowdy, blue-collar perspective.

After taking the female country vocal Grammy in 2005, being named female singer of the year by both major country music organizations, after generating all that media heat and cultural commentary and record sales, Wilson looked like a good bet for best country album with “All Jacked Up.”

But the Grammy went to Alison Krauss & Union Station’s “Lonely Runs Both Ways” instead. There’s nothing embarrassing about losing to this widely respected Grammy perennial, whose three awards Wednesday gave her a career total of 20, the most of any female artist.

And who can complain about Emmylou Harris, who still seems underrated despite her 11 Grammys, getting her first female country vocal award since 1984, even if it means Wilson has to wait at least another year for her second?

Less edifying is Grammy voters’ rejection of the Wilson revolution in favor of the stodgy couple of Faith Hill and Tim McGraw in the country collaboration competition over Wilson and Merle Haggard’s pointed commentary “Politically Uncorrect,” and the Rascal Flatts’ hit “Bless the Broken Road” in the country song category over “All Jacked Up.”

Wilson wrote that infectious barroom boogie with a cadre of fellow rebels who don’t sound like the types to let one downer night upend their dreams. As she sings in that song, “One thing I’ve learned when you get tore up, time sure flies when you’re all jacked up.”