When did you first start singing?
Naomi Judd: I started singing when Wynonna was 12. That's a weird answer, but it was all predicated on her. So that's the origin. She was 12 years old. She was beyond rebellious. This was a kid who had the attention span of a gnat, and we were living on a mountaintop in Kentucky with no TV or telephone. So you can't even imagine the resentment that she had for me at that point in her life. I took her from living off of Sunset Strip in Hollyweird (and put her) on a mountaintop and put her in earth shoes and overalls and said, "This is the drill. Welcome to the country. Pretend you are in the middle of a National Geographic special. You will plant a garden. You will learn how to take care of animals. You will communicate with your lovely eight-year-old sister, and you will develop your imagination."
And one night, I handed her an old flanky guitar, just so we could keep from killing each other, and something magical happened when I handed her that guitar. I said, "Hmm, very interesting." She just acted like it was an appendage of herself, and she would sit, literally for hours, hunkered over this thing, and I went, "Hmm. Now, if I was to participate with her, what would happen?" And really, it was that natural in evolution. There was never any epiphany where you went, "Bingo, I've got it. We'll go to Nashville and be country singers." We were just trying to communicate with each other.
So it was more about bringing the two of you together? Naomi Judd: Right. I actually had this very romantic noble notion of being a doctor and working with my people in Appalachia. We're from Kentucky, and I wanted to work with the unloved and the unlovely and was putting myself through nursing school at that point.
So that as we lived in a splendid isolation on this hilltop in Morrill, Kentucky, I was doing it for a multitude of reasons. One was to sort of decompress and demystify the Hollywood thing -- you know, the artifice, the greed, the commercialization -- just sort of to turn down the background noise. I needed the solitude definitely for my studies, and I really wanted the girls to understand their Appalachian heritage. I had already been hip to it my whole life, but I really wanted them to understand this very rich legacy that they had. And this was just such fertile ground for them to each tap into that intuition that gets beat out of kids these days. So when I took away all of this overstimulation and they really had to hear their own inner voices and open up, like I said, Wynonna was 12 and Ashley was eight at that point, and Ashley, frankly, didn't need music to communicate. She was one of these popular, well-rounded, "straight A" kind of kids, very autonomous. So I handed her a book, and the same thing happened. She began to develop a fantasy life with the written page.
She became an actress and she just finished starring in a movie with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino and Val Kilmer.
I look back on that summer and I think, as a mom, I was literally getting out of bed every day going, "Oh, my God, I don't know what I'm doing. I feel ill-equipped. I don't know how to handle these kids. I've just done the best I can from moment to moment, living a paycheck away from the streets." I got tired of being on welfare, so I put myself in college. And trying to give Ashley what she so needed and deserved as far as stability, and trying to give Wynonna something to get us through the day.
Could you tell us how your recording contract came about? It's such an amazing story. Naomi Judd: You know, it's the strangest thing to hear other people talk, or to read about yourself in print and to see something sort of become folklore, when you know the truth of the matter is that it was actually just a series of very ordinary moments. Earlier today, I was talking to Rosa Parks, and I thought, "All she was doing was being herself." All she was doing was saying, "This is what I stand for, and this is what I don't dig."
Wynonna and I walked into RCA Records on Music Row in Nashville, Tennessee, March 3rd of 1983, and supreme naiveté. I think I had on a $20 dress from the flea market and this old plastic gut string guitar, and our knees were knocking so loud, we thought they could hear us. And we sat down in front of these big enchiladas and said, "Hey, this is who we are, and this is what we do," and we sang a couple of songs that I had written, which were pretty wacky. They were pretty out there, and they said, "Go down the street to a restaurant, and let us sort of talk this over," and they walked down to the restaurant and stuck out their hand and said, "Congratulations. You're RCA's newest act." Of course, we thought that everybody did it that way. We were clueless. They were the big deal at that time in '83. I remember we walked down the halls -- and of course they had Elvis and Kenny Rogers -- in 1983, it was Alabama and Dolly Parton, and it was like the Hall of Fame. Wynonna just walked in like, "I'm in church. This is a sacred place. This is the mother church of country music."
We didn't have a bio. We didn't have an eight-by-ten. We didn't have -- zero, zip, zilch. You talk about falling off the turnip truck! I love it, because that gives people hope, because that's what we're all about is saying that, "You know, technology is cool, it's all great, and the information highway and all that stuff, but you know what? Give me that human touch. Give me that one-on-one."
What was it like when you first opened for the Statler Brothers? You'd never seen that many people in one place before. Naomi Judd: I know that life is made up of ordinary moments. That's the greatest percentage of our lives, but there are those tens on the emotional Richter scale that just go off the graph, whether it's your graduation or having a child or getting married. I realized how enormously privileged I am, because there are only a few people who ever get to play the London Palladium or headline at the Astrodome or Madison Square Garden.
One of the ultimate joys for me in these experiences -- of getting to perform for the first time in Omaha, Nebraska with the Statler Brothers -- is that I know I'm not special. There's absolutely nothing special or different about Naomi Ellen Judd, and I've always just felt like I am their representative. I just get to be the designated hitter. So, when I would get out on that stage and start twisting and twirling, I was doing it for all the single working moms, for all the women who were lonely and felt like they were just anonymous, just a victim or a face, living a paycheck away from the streets every week, or wondering how you're going to put a jar of chunky peanut butter on the table for the kids tomorrow night. I would be on that stage, or accepting a Grammy at a podium, or sitting on the couch of The Tonight Show, and it was such a humbling experience, because I just felt like I was their representative. I was just the one who got to have the nice dress and got to have the opportunity.
We're lucky to have you up there.
Naomi Judd: One of the things I've been saying to these kids here at the Academy today is I'm not a magical being. None of us are born with our destiny stamped on our foreheads. And if they start to come up to me and they're crying or shaking and I get this vibe of "Oh, if I can just but touch the hem of her garment, I will be made whole" kind of thing, I just grab them by the shoulders and make eye contact, and I say, "Hey, come on. Let's get real here. I am just like you. You are just like me, and let's talk about what you want to do." We're just dreamers. That's all it is, man. We're just a bunch of dreamers.
Maybe the adults here at the Academy are the charter members, and the kids are the initiates, but that's all it is. They've got parents. They've got teachers. We're just going to take it to a new level here. "Hey, we've got this club. Come on, we're all in this together." When you were a kid, was there a particular person who really inspired you?
Naomi Judd: You know, I've been asked a lot the last years, in the career, in interviews, who were my role models and who were my idols and all that, and I suppose, the interviewer would expect me to say Joni Mitchell or Aretha Franklin or whatever. But actually, I have to acknowledge that the people who really just tattooed themselves on my mind and on my memory were people like my Aunt Pauline, who lived on a farm and didn't have running water, who communicated with animals and sort of knew her place in the scheme of things. She was such a gentle soul, and a very childlike spirit actually, who just had this wonderment, this awe about life. And all the patients that I'm taking care of in the hospital who had terminal illnesses, who were so resolute and so brave and so courageous, that it was a privilege to take care of them.
You had a healing vocation, didn't you? You really saw yourself as somebody who would help people. What drew you to medicine and nursing?
Naomi Judd: You know, when I was a little girl, I could not tolerate human suffering. It wasn't even in the equation. Whether it was taking Barbie Henton her books from school because she had the mumps, I would have to go in and make sure she was okay for myself, and even risk getting it. Something happens, like this little switch gets flipped in my brain when I see someone in pain, whether it is physical or psychic. I have to do something. I have to react, and it's almost like a knee-jerk reaction. I just have to do something. I remember when we signed with RCA Records in 1983 in Nashville, and we were in show business. I was very clear to our manager and the heads of the label and to Wynonna and everyone, and I said, "Okay. I'm going to try this. If it turns out to be phony baloney, I'm out of here. I'm going to go back and catch babies in the woods. I'm going to do home visitation. I'm going to get my M.D."
But the strangest thing happened. I finally got to be on stage for the first time, and I looked out at the sea of smiling faces in this steel and concrete sterile coliseum, and we were just levitating the building. I could feel that music was this transmitter between our souls. It gave us direct access to the seat of our souls. And when I would join in harmony with Wynonna, we just get zapped, and I thought, "Music is the language of the spirit. It's a healer. It expresses emotions that my words can't adequately define," and I went, "Yes!"
If you were speaking to a young person who wants to go into music or wants any career and looks at the competition out there and the odds, what would you tell that person to inspire them? What do you think are the most important characteristics they need to achieve something?
Naomi Judd: I'd say if a person who wanted to get into music was sitting right here with me right now, just the two of us alone in a room, I would say, "First, check your heart." And what I mean by that is really look in that mirror of truth at yourself and say, "Okay. Do I want to be rich and famous? Do I want to have the checks? Do I want to ride in limos and be on the cover of magazines, or do I feel that this is what I was born to do, this is me consciously cooperating with my destiny? Am I doing this because I get so psyched doing it that I can't not do it? Do I realize that this comes from God, that this is a talent, that this is a gift from the supreme ruler of the universe?" And if you're real clear and honest with yourself about why you want to do it, then you're going to be happy.
Were there any books that you loved when you were a child, or any teachers that stand out in your mind?
Naomi Judd: I had the greatest childhood. It was really very much like The Waltons. Do you remember that show on TV? Because Mommy and Daddy were both at home. Mom was a homemaker, and I could walk to all the schools I ever went to. I could walk to the First Baptist Church. I could walk to our two little movie theaters. I had it made in the shade, and this gave me such a sense of stability, and my roots were very, very deep. And in the fourth grade, I had a remarkably kind woman named Mildred Rigsby who told me that I was special, and oh how I loved to hear that! She let me be Priscilla in Pilgrims' Progress in our school play, and we would put our heads down on our desk every night when class was over with at three o'clock, and sing a soothing little song called "Now the Day is Over," and she'd ask me to lead the singing, and that gave me a sense of belonging to something that was so much bigger than me.
How about books?
Naomi Judd: I loved books. I just was a voracious reader. I read everything from Nancy Drew and Carolyn Keene mysteries when I was in grade school. Probably, one of my all time favorite books is To Kill a Mockingbird. That's the kind of stuff I loved. And I found that with books, I could go places that my feet couldn't even take me, and when I read books, I found out that there were other people who thought the same way that I did, other people who felt the same as I did. It just opened up the world to me. I loved my small town, but it really just blew out the borders.
You've had to deal with illness and some very tough stuff in recent years, but you seem so optimistic and idealistic. How has that been for you? What tools have you used to deal with your own physical challenges? Naomi Judd: People think that once you reach a certain status in life you have handlers and people to grease the way for you, but I always seemed to be left alone to my own devices. I always seem to be starting over.
It began when I was 17, and I had started my senior year of high school and I found out I'm pregnant, and my family is exploding into chaos, and my little brother is dying, and my parents are getting a divorce. I mean, I'm PG in 1963 in small town America. Big scandal! It was awful. And that was the night that I grew up, because I realized as I sat there and told my family doctor that I thought I was pregnant, he began to weep, and I remember sitting there in my chair, and it dawned on me for the first time in my young life that change is the true nature of this world. And I got up out of my seat and walked behind his desk and put my hand on his starched white lab coat and said, "It's okay. I don't have anything else, but I have hope."
It sounds like you were taking care of him. Naomi Judd: Well, see...
(My doctor) thought that I had come out to his office to ask him about my brother Brian, who was dying of Hodgkin's disease. I had a very, very undemonstrative family. You sort of sweep it under the rug, because it's not pleasant to talk about. We had a loving family, but we just didn't know how to communicate. It was that old generation. Daddy drove a pickup and smoked Camels and read Mickey Spillane and went hunting. And he worked like a brute, that's how he told us kids that he loved us. But anyway, when I would get kicked in the face -- as the years passed -- by life's circumstances, I would just sort of pull myself up and brush myself off and go, "All right, kiddo. So life's not fair. Big fat hairy deal. Let's figure out where to go from here," and I would just say, "Well, how do I want things to be?" And I would start imagining in my mind, "Well, I'd really like to have a car whose primary coat isn't Bondo. I'd like to have a savings account. What a concept! I'd love to have medical insurance, and I'd like to be able to be in the same room with Wynonna Judd for a few hours without wanting to pull every hair out of her head." So I would just sit and imagine each one of these things, how I wanted them to come out, and I would go into prayer about it.
We now have scientific documentation on how prayer works. We're all fields of energy, and it's so cool that now we're getting this empirical data about how it actually comes about in a tangible way.
But the biggie really was when I was told I had a couple of years. That will get your attention in a major way, especially when it's a sticky wicket because you're an RN and you're a member of the medical community and you see the writing on the wall. You can look at the pathology report laying there on the doctor's desk, and he doesn't even have to open his mouth, and you go "Uh oh!" And once again, I had to step out in total faith, but it was one of the greatest lessons of my life, because I began a voyage of self discovery and what actually became a journey to wholeness for me.
Naomi Judd: I think it's almost like our soul has certain assignments, and we don't get it. We want to be cruising with the top down, but every time this stuff would happen to me, somehow I had an intuition. Well, of course it has to come from God. I knew that even though it was a piece of crap, it was going to make me stronger, that I was going to be putting new tools in my psychological tool box, that it was all up to me to determine how I felt about it.
When I couldn't change the way things were out there, I could change the way I felt about them, and finally it dawned on me that really control is just an illusion, and security is a superstition. The only control you really have is over yourself, and true security comes from inside. So, after I'm told that I've bought the farm, that I'm out of here, I really had to do one of these, "Wait a minute, this doctor with all his honking degrees on the wall, he's not God, and all of these medical books that I am so enamored of -- I just love medicine because I love finding solutions -- these are not Bibles. God is a supernatural being. This universe actually runs on spiritual laws. Hello!" So, infinite possibilities. And I just sat there and stared at all the medical dogma, and all these guys, and said, "I'm going to go into complete chemical remission because I do know enough -- just enough -- to know that the spirit, the mind, and the body are all one package." I knew that from my mom teaching me that I was a kid of the most high God, and also from all of this anecdotal experience from being an RN. So I began going where my questions led me, and I began meeting with the most brilliant minds in America in the "spirit-mind-body" field.
Chemists, biologists, doctors, research scientists, anthropologists, therapists, psychologists, and so on. How are you feeling these days?
Naomi Judd: I'm pumping like an oil well. I'm in total remission. I am living proof that it pays to believe in miracles, and actually, I mean that on a lot of different levels, whether it's chasing that dream and grabbing hold of it, or healing a fractured relationship with my rebellious child and becoming each other's best friend, or finding my Prince Charming and having a completely wonderful marriage, or getting to sing, which is my Jones, or getting myself -- with God's grace -- getting myself into remission against incredibly great odds.
From being told you only had a few years to live, you now have a long life ahead of you. What do you want to do with your life? Naomi Judd: What do I want to do? There's really only two things I haven't done, and that's work for the phone company and be an air traffic controller.
One of the things that having a life-threatening illness will do for you is it will really stop your program. I was very goal oriented. I would say, "Okay. In five years, I want to have this many Grammys. In five years, I want this many platinum albums and this many number ones. No, I didn't think of it in those terms. I just knew that I wanted to reach more people with Judd music because we feel so strongly about our message and about communicating with people. Since my illness, I live fully in the moment, and a very priceless lesson is in that, because when you practice what is called "life-centered present moment awareness," you're not feeling guilty about something you just did, and you're not anxious or freaked about something that's getting ready to come around the corner at you. You're fully alive, and you're hip to all the blessings, and you're aware of all five of your senses, which is the reason we're here on earth, to really grow in wisdom and grow in love and understand our true nature. I feel so bad for these folks that are just, "Well, how many things can I pencil in my day timer today?" and "How many appointments can I make?" And "Let's get that Mercedes and that Rolex watch and hang with the right folks." Whew! That ain't living. That's being a puppet.
The more famous you get, and the more successful, the more demands are made on your time. Do you find you have to protect yourself from those demands to live your own life and not live everyone else's life?
Naomi Judd: I had to finally add a word to my vocabulary, and that word was "no." Because when I was a kid, I made all A's. I kept my room clean. I colored within the lines. I so wanted to be loved, because I genuinely loved people, and I wanted them to reciprocate, and that's how I would get my acceptance sometimes. When we started really popping with the career -- the demands and the constant pulls on us -- I would sometimes go without sleep, just so I could be a good girl and do what everybody needed me to do. And then when my illness came along, I had no choice. It was a life and death situation, and I had to say, "No. My plate is full. Thank you."
And it was the first time, because I had it backwards. I thought this was a luxury.
I thought that I was indulging myself if I would go off into the woods for a few days by myself. That was, like some women go to a spa or go to Saks on a buying spree. What I always craved was solitude, because I think silence is refreshment for our souls. It's also creativity's best friend, and I really needed to digest all of the miraculous things that were transpiring in our lives, the opportunities to travel and to really submerge into all these subcultures in America and see this crazy quilt that America is. It's important for us to sort of stop the car, take out the map, see if we're going in the right direction. We would just have days where I'd sit with Wynonna and Ashley and I'd say, "Okay. Tell me what's going on inside. I see what's going on on the outside. I want to listen." So there are all these good things, and I have to really temper this. There are all these good things that have come out of my illness, very, very valuable precious things. You just have to cut out this roaring confusion of modern society. It's deafening, and it's insane. Just because you have success, what the world calls success, doesn't mean that you're a prisoner of that. It simply means that you have more choices, and I'm so aware and grateful of that, to have options, because I didn't used to have very many.
What does the phrase "American Dream" mean to you?
Naomi Judd: Those are two really cool words, "American" and "dream," because I'm so stinking patriotic. I have a flag flying from my front porch at my house, and I really understand. Because I'm just a free spirit myself, I really, really get it about how lucky we all are to be living in this country. And the word "dream," it's like it's in my DNA or something. I'm a total dream chaser. Wynonna and I used to sing a song every night on stage called "Dream Chaser," because it was our anthem. We named our bus the Dream Chaser. We had it on the back of the bus, and people see us going down life's highways, and that's exactly what we were doing. We were just out there chasing our dreams. And when you say "American" and "dream," it almost has an exponential quality to it, because I'm living proof that if you live in America, you can do anything, because I was born in a small town, Ashland, Kentucky. Daddy had a gas station, and I come from the ranks, from a blue collar, hard-working family. I just decided that nobody and nothing was going to stop me from doing what I wanted to do, whether it was getting my butt off welfare and putting myself through college when I had sole responsibility for two little girls -- one of which was Hurricane Wynonna -- or was a battered woman and I decided, "Unh unh, I ain't going to do this no more." So it's one of those things where "You change your mind, you change your life," and I decided that we were going to go to Nashville, Tennessee, and get into country music.
I didn't have anybody to help me or pat me on the head or write me a check or open a door for me or nothing until we got there and started putting the team together. You mentioned in passing that you had been battered by a boyfriend at one time. More and more attention is being paid to that problem in our society. What gave you the strength to walk away from that and inspire other people to get away from those self-destructive relationships? So many people can't get away until it's too late.
Naomi Judd: I think what happens with these people who are battered, or who found themselves in really abusive situations, is that somehow they have not been taught to love themselves. They don't realize their self worth. They don't understand the power, the personal power that they have, and that they are ultimately the decision maker. There's a strange phenomenon that goes on with so many women -- and I don't think it's as prevalent perhaps today as it was in another generation -- of feeling that they don't have choices. You know, there are more animal shelters than there are shelters for abused women in America. The same little thing that there are more lawyers than there are doctors. Go figure. But so many of my girlfriends don't understand that they have personal power. They give it away. They let the man tell them who and what they are, and it breaks my heart.
I used to be very -- what's the word? "Subservient" is a good word. I always assumed that he knew better, but you just reach a point where you decide, "Okay, I was a victim once, but I ain't going to be a volunteer anymore." Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Naomi Judd: Thank you! You've been really patient!
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