A country all her own

WHEN Gretchen Wilson reached for a paper cup during an interview on her tour bus, I assumed she was going to pour some coffee. Instead, she brought the empty cup to her mouth and casually spit into it -- brown tobacco juice.

No wonder record executives in this country music capital all but ducked under their desks when the former Illinois bartender and bouncer came calling time after time only a few years ago looking for a contract. The bigwigs had spent millions trying to downplay country’s hillbilly roots by promoting glamorous, pop-minded female singers, such as Faith Hill and Shania Twain, hoping to appeal to the lucrative pop market.

Now, here was someone who’d remind all those pop fans that country music is the land of “Hee Haw” and trailer parks. She was so far from the country diva model that execs might have thought someone was playing a joke on them.

It didn’t matter that this wild card had a voice with the purity and power of Patsy Cline or Loretta Lynn. In today’s cautious country market, even those Hall of Fame members might have a hard time getting a contract -- and they weren’t spitting tobacco.

“I did showcase after showcase and the story was the same,” Wilson, 32, said on the bus during a break in the shooting of a video for “Politically Uncorrect,” a duet with Merle Haggard. “They thought my hair was too dated, that I was too heavy, too old.”

Wilson might still be singing for the regulars in dingy downtown bars except that John Rich of the maverick country duo Big & Rich spotted her one night and was knocked out. He eventually teamed with her to write her breakout hit, “Redneck Woman,” a raucous, honky-tonk number that is, in part, Wilson’s retort to all the polish and politeness of today’s female country stars.

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You might think I’m trashy,

a little too hard core

But in my neck of the woods

I’m just the girl next door.

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The song shot to No. 1 on country charts in 2004 and stirred up Nashville more than anything since the arrival of the Dixie Chicks in the late ‘90s.

Wilson’s debut album, “Here for the Party,” has sold more than 4 million copies in the U.S. and her new one, the equally party-minded “All Jacked Up,” has sold an additional million since October.

Eager to find Wilsons of their own, execs may now even be ordering spittoons.

“When people first heard ‘Redneck Woman,’ everybody in the industry said, ‘There’s no way that’s going to fly,’ ” said songwriter Vicky McGehee, who collaborates frequently with Wilson.

“But the country audience related to her right away. She wasn’t the glamour girl. She was drinking a beer in her videos and belching. Now everyone is trying to sign a redneck. You’ll see a bunch of girls coming out in the next couple of years that will all look kinda like Gretchen.”

And the excitement isn’t just over sales. It was easy to suspect “Redneck Woman” was just a clever novelty, but the second album showed Wilson is a remarkable talent, blessed with character and purpose. She has been named female singer of the year by the Country Music Assn. and the rival Academy of Country Music.

Radio programmers favor Wilson’s upbeat songs, but she may be the most convincing on ballads, which she sings with a tenderness and ache that makes every line feel seasoned by sleepless nights and hangover mornings.

Wilson is in a long line of mavericks who had to fight the Nashville Establishment. Johnny Cash had to overcome the skepticism of Sony executives before doing his landmark Folsom Prison album. Willie Nelson had to return to Texas before he could ignite the Outlaw movement.

“No one comes right out and tells you to be a puppet,” Wilson said on the bus. “But that’s what they’d like you to be. When John Grady said he wanted to sign me at Sony, I was shocked. I had given up. He was the first person I met at any label that I felt like he got it.

“I didn’t even have to explain myself to him. I didn’t have to change my ain’ts into isn’ts.”

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A farm-to-fame wardrobe

WILSON was a lot like you’d expect from her records, but also a lot different as she stood on the soundstage for the video during the lunch break. She had already been through makeup. Yes, even redneck women want to look nice on television. But she didn’t have to leave time for wardrobe.

Instead of the flowing gowns often favored by female country stars in videos, she wore the same T-shirt and torn jeans that she put on at her ranch before driving her pickup to the video shoot.

That all fit her tough-gal image -- along with the bottle of Jack Daniel’s nearby. But soon it became clear that “aint’s” or other grammatical violations of the lyrics were all poetic license.

Wilson kidded around a lot when she was among friends on the set, but in the privacy of the bus, she was focused and articulate. Almost everything she said was quotable, reminding me of another articulate and focused artist who people had trouble taking seriously: Madonna.

“Gretchen may only have an eighth-grade education, but she’s got a PhD in street smarts,” her road manager, David Haskell, had told me before the interview.

Wilson realizes many people thought her whole redneck approach was a gimmick -- almost a parody of country stereotypes -- but she says “Redneck Woman” is her favorite song to sing because it is “so true.”

“To me, being a redneck woman means being a strong woman,” she said, nibbling on a McDonald’s Happy Meal she had ordered. “It’s about holding your head up no matter what is happening. I know the term used to have other meanings, but to me it’s just another way of saying country.”

But not everyone likes it. She drew the ire of Tennessee Atty. Gen. Paul Summers with “Skoal Ring,” a rambunctious tale about falling in love with a redneck man -- one whose back pocket is marked by the outlines of a round Skoal tobacco can.

Summers complained in a letter to Wilson and her record company that the ode to smokeless tobacco products sent a dangerous message to her young fans.

Wilson stopped holding up a Skoal can in concert -- which she’d mainly done to make sure everyone knew what she was talking about. But she refused to stop singing the song.

“The song’s not even about Skoal,” she said disdainfully. “It’s about a guy. I would never want to encourage anyone to do anything that’s damaging to their health. But, bottom line, I’m just telling my story.”

That story, indeed, is as rich as any good ole country song.

Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn talk about humble beginnings, but Wilson may have them both beat. She grew up in Pocahontas, Ill., spending much of her childhood in trailer parks squeezed in between cornfields and pig farms.

Wilson’s father split when she was 2, and her mother worked at Big O’s, a bare-knuckle bar where songs such as “Redneck Woman” and “Politically Uncorrect” would have been at home on the jukebox.

By her late teens, Wilson was living on her own and managing Big O’s, where a 12-gauge shotgun was kept nearby in case of trouble. She earned tips by singing along with CDs.

She got so much attention that she moved to Nashville in 1996, hoping for a record contract, but the best she could do was to get jobs singing on demos -- the informal recordings that publishers make to shop their songs to the labels and other artists. Lots of country singers, including Trisha Yearwood, got their start that way.

At label after label execs liked the voice on the demos enough to check Wilson out, but they just didn’t like what they saw. Where was the pop potential?

The person who did recognize her talent and potential was Sony’s Grady.

In his office across town, Grady pointed to a huge photo of Cash on the wall behind his desk. He calls the photo his conscience.

“I wanted it there to remind me every day that the man who sat in this chair 50 years ago had the foresight to sign Johnny Cash,” said Grady, who was instrumental in putting together the rootsy “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack at Mercury Records.

“But I also wanted the photo to remind me every day that years later another man in this chair told Johnny Cash that his music was no longer relevant.”

Grady had been recruited by Sony specifically to bring in new blood -- the roster of the once proud Columbia and Epic labels was pretty bland. He’d been on the job only 10 days when Wilson walked into his office and sang two songs.

“All I remember is she had this big, incredible, booming voice,” he said. “She filled up the room. It was almost like my teeth were rattling. I identified with her right away because I know a lot of people like her. I grew up in a town in Nebraska as small as her hometown.”

About image, he added, “I don’t think it’s a crime for a singer to be stunning looking. I just think we should be in the business of artists, not image, because images come and go, but artists have staying power.”

Another thing Wilson has going for her is that she doesn’t have to spend any time on her persona. The phrase you hear about her all over town is: What you see is what you get.

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It’s the music that matters

LATER in the day on the set, she was much more eager to talk to her pals and cuddle a friend’s baby than check the playbacks of scenes.

She accepts the video shoots and interviews as part of the machinery of show business, but her interest is almost totally in the music. The only thing that seems to compete for her time is her 5-year-old daughter, Grace, whom she even takes with her on tour. (Wilson and the girl’s father broke up last year. They were never married.)

“I’ve read all these stories about I’ve finally made it and all my dreams have come true,” Wilson said, waiting for the next scene to begin shooting. “But I still feel out of place in the music business.

“The most exciting thing is the way people in the audience respond to the music. It makes me feel like I’m saying something important because music was terribly important to me. When I was a kid, music sometimes felt like it was the only thing that kept me going when things got incredibly tough.”

She often weaves similar pep talks into her songs.

“Not Bad for a Bartender,” which she wrote with Rich and McGehee, is a straight-ahead, honky-tonk celebration of how far Wilson has come.

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I’m on the stool side of the bar these days

Buying everyone a round

Ain’t it funny how the tables turn

Not bad for a bartender.

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It’s a feel-good tale that even pop fans could embrace -- a song in the underdog tradition of Garth Brooks’ exuberant “Friends in Low Places” or even Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson’s nostalgic “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love).”

She also sees “Politically Uncorrect” in that uplifting spirit.

Sony had suggested some of the other songs on “All Jacked Up” for Wilson’s next single, including “California Girls,” a wry tale lampooning “skinny little girls with no meat on their bones and never even heard of George Jones.” She even names names, taking a swipe at Paris Hilton’s “big fake smile and her painted-on tan.”

It has the sound of a country smash, but Wilson insisted on releasing “Politically Uncorrect” because she likes the message of the song, which was written by Leslie Satcher, Danny Steagall and Billy Henderson.

As the camera crew got in place for another take, Wilson took her place on the soundstage. Several extras, dressed up as a preacher, construction worker and other characters in the song, fell into place behind her. One young woman carried a sign that read “Put Prayer Back in Schools.” Another read “Don’t Take My Farm.”

Wilson had hoped Haggard, one of her musical inspirations, would be there to sing with her, but illness in the family kept him away. His part in the duet will apparently be added later.

It’s an inspired pairing because Haggard wrote some commentaries in the ‘60s, including “Okie From Muskogee” and “Fightin’ Side of Me,” that spoke to a similar blue-collar crowd yet seduced even big-city liberals.

As the fiddles and guitars started playing on the record, Wilson lip-synced the words:

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And I’m for the Bible and I’m for the flag

And I’m for the working man, me and ol’ Hag

I’m just one of many

Who can’t get no respect.

Politically uncorrect.

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“I’m not a politician, but I do feel strongly about things,” she said later in the day.

“To me, the song is saying everyone should have a voice and everyone deserves respect, whether you’re an overweight country singer or living in a trailer park.”

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In no one’s shadow

THE pop world may never warm up to Wilson, but Nashville has certainly fallen under her spell.

“I put her right there with Loretta Lynn and people like that,” said Kyle Young, director of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum here. “She sings about her own life, which is what all great country artists have done, and I think she’ll continue to do fine if she doesn’t let anyone tamper with her music.”

Some of the executives are enthused because they smell profits. Country music labels are as desperate to jump-start sales as their pop rivals. Country’s share of a dwindling music market is down from 16% in 1995 to just over 10% in 2004.

They can still push their Faiths and Shanias to a pop audience and rake in millions from just the country field with some of the harder-core artists.

Other execs have fallen in love with her talent.

“When I speak to her, I find myself a little intimidated, the fact she’s so good,” said Tony Brown, the much respected co-chairman of Universal South Records. “I love being around people who are so good, like Alison Krauss and Vince Gill. I think she’s that good.”

But he warns against the rush to sign Gretchen Wilson clones.

“When George Strait and Alan Jackson and Garth Brooks came along, everyone thought hat acts were happening,” he continued. “But what they found, after signing a lot of other artists, was there were just three great artists who happened to wear hats.

“That’s probably true with Gretchen. Every woman who didn’t have the nerve to do what Gretchen did is probably going to start coming to town, but the odds are they’re not going to be as good.”

Given all this enthusiasm, why did Nashville resist Wilson for so long?

Marc Oswald, a country music veteran who co-manages Wilson with Dale Morris, thinks she was just too independent for a town that loves to fit singers into formulas. Typically, he said, a label will find a new singer and bring in a producer, who brings in the songs. Then the marketing department helps the singer create a commercial image, then the media department schools the artist in what to say.

“Gretchen didn’t do any of that. The label signed her, and she did the rest. She reminded everyone that they should be in the music business, not the image business. It has woken a lot of people up.”

As Wilson relaxed in the bus before her final call of the day on the video set, she again reached for the cup and held it to her lips.

“Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong generation,” Wilson said. “At the same time, I hope I’m helping create a new era, where people feel comfortable and confident walking into a record company door and being themselves.

“If I was 60 years old and had gone through my career singing songs that everyone else told me to sing and pretend I was someone else, I don’t care if I had a wall full of trophies. I wouldn’t be smiling.”

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The roots of inspiration

Gretchen Wilson says singing a duet with Merle Haggard on her new album is a dream come true. She loves not only Haggard’s distinctive vocal style, but the honesty of his songs. Here are three of her other favorite country singers and a surprise choice for her favorite album.

LORETTA LYNN

“She spoke her mind, which isn’t as common as you might think in the music business. Loretta put things into songs that no woman had ever said at that time, and she can still do that. I love her latest album, ‘Van Lear Rose.’ ”

GEORGE JONES

“I love how he always surprises you vocally, and he has a way of making you believe every word in a song. His ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’ is at the heart of country music.”

PATSY CLINE

“I remember listening to her when I was 12 and how she made me understand what heartache felt in a way I don’t think many 12-year-olds can even begin to feel. She was the one who made me want to sing.”

AC/DC’s “Back in Black”

“I grew up in a kind of Southern-rock world. I didn’t distinguish between country and rock. It all sort of blended together. You walk into any tavern back home and you’re going to find AC/DC next to Patsy Cline. You won’t find Celine Dion.”

-- R.H.

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Contact Robert Hilburn, pop music critic of The Times, at calendar.letters@latimes.com