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Wynonna Judd Confronts Her Past With a Soulful New Album
With the release of ‘The Hard Truth,’ the country star talks about finding the strength to heal
6-minute read
On her newest album, “The Hard Truth,” Wynonna Judd turns grief, heartbreak and hard-won wisdom into some of her most personal music yet. Judd returned to recording music in the wake of her mother’s 2022 suicide.
Thomas Crabtree/Courtesy True Public Relations
For Wynonna Judd, writing The Hard Truth, her first album in 10 years, was an act of healing. It was her way of coming to terms with the 2022 suicide of her mother, Naomi. “I thought I was going to go crazy if I didn’t write it,” says Judd, 62. “I just was paralyzed by grief, and I had nowhere else to go.”
Judd sang with her mother for eight years, from 1983 to 1991, as half of The Judds, winning five Grammys and enjoying such hits as “Mama He’s Crazy,” “Why Not Me” and “Grandpa (Tell Me ’Bout the Good Old Days).”
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On Judd’s new album, the track “All Downhill From Ashland” details the duo’s difficulties out of the spotlight after they’d left Wynonna’s hometown of Ashland, Kentucky: “If we’d a known the beginning was the end / We should have known, we would have known / The truth is it was all downhill from Ashland.”
“The Hard Truth,” Judd’s first album in 10 years, was an act of healing. “I thought I was going to go crazy if I didn’t write it,” she says.
Courtesy Anti-Records
Naomi retired in 1991 due to complications from hepatitis C. Wynonna launched a solo career and scored hits with “Is It Over Yet,” which earned a Grammy nomination, and “She Is His Only Need” and “No One Else on Earth,” a huge crossover success, from her 1992 five-times-platinum debut album, Wynonna. Her mother’s death is just one of the tragedies the country singer has survived. Judd addresses them all in The Hard Truth, with songs she cowrote with her husband, Cactus Moser. Two of them, “The Hopeful Lie” and “Drive,” have to do with Judd’s fraught relationship with her daughter, Grace, who has spent time in jail.
The album features guests Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers; Americana duo The War and Treaty; and singer-songwriter Iron & Wine (Sam Beam).
In a heartfelt and candid conversation with AARP, Judd, who lives in the rural village of Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee (outside of Nashville), shared what keeps her going and expressed hope that her new album will give voice and comfort to others who seek to turn their pain into purpose.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Your childhood was very different from your life now.
Ashley [her actor sister] and I were raised on welfare. My mother had a handheld counter, and when we’d go to the store she’d put in the amount of a loaf of bread, and then she would know what she had left. Sometimes we had no meals at all. There weren’t a lot of candy bars and sodas, let’s put it that way. We wore secondhand clothes from the Goodwill, and we cut our own hair. I went from that to a record deal and touring and opening for George Strait. I had no idea how to handle success or even balance a checkbook.
The Hard Truth feels like a reexamination of your past from a place of wisdom.
I think I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling like I wasn’t enough. I’m such a people pleaser that I felt like I was always meant to be there for others. Now, at 62, I feel like I’m supposed to do what God wants me to do, and sometimes that is to say “no.” That’s really hard sometimes. I feel like I’m a little bit better at being alone. I’m definitely better at being a human because I’m working so hard on myself.
You never knew your biological father. That is a different kind of grief.
I get angry that I never met him, and that leads back to my mother. I try to understand what she was going through. How did she manage to not tell me who he was? That’s the whole circle of grief that you [go] through — the five stages. I just have to process it the best that I can.
The mother-daughter duo performed as The Judds from 1983 to 1991, playing at the ACM Awards in Los Angeles in 1985.
Ron Wolfson/Getty Images
You sing about being a parent to a child struggling with addiction. The song “Drive” is about going to see her in prison. What did you learn about love and mothering from these experiences?
That you show up, no matter what. You try to stay present and try to fully engage with your daughter, who you can’t do anything for. I became so consumed with worrying about Grace — where she was, if she was safe, if she was alive — that I lost myself. I would be packing to go on the road, and I would cry and think I couldn’t leave in case she needed me. I had to learn I can’t save her. Right now, I don’t know where she is.
You’ve been in some kind of counseling since you were 16. Do you still value talking things out?
I think sometimes we have to have another person. We can get so stuck on ourselves and our constant voice [in our heads]. That’s what church is to me: having a conversation with someone and listening. I had dinner recently with Melissa Etheridge [with whom Judd toured this past summer] and her partner. Melissa and I share a bond of grief over our children, since she lost her son Beckett to opioid addiction. That talk opened a channel of information that I can apply to my life. Oddly, it wasn’t about fame and fortune and success; it was about our kids. We have so much to be thankful for, and yet sometimes we struggle with the sadness of losing someone who is so important. How do I walk through this sadness right now? For me, that’s music. I go to music right away.
As you raise your granddaughter, what do you wish for her?
Kaliyah’s already a bareback rider at 4, so I keep her around horses. She has chores every day. She has to show up for those things, even when she doesn’t want to. I want Kaliyah to have a strong sense of self in a world that’s always trying to brand you.
You’ve been married to Cactus for 14 years. What holds you together?
Laughter and adoration. He goes out on stage every night and gives a thousand percent, and I can rest in that. If I try to start something when I’m having a moment, he is always so fricking funny and stays in his own space. I’ve never had that in my life. I’ve never had that kind of respect for someone. This man is my king.
(From left) Wynonna and Naomi Judd attend the CMT Music Awards in Nashville, Tennessee, on April 11, 2022. Naomi died just weeks later.
Jason Kempin/Getty Images for CMT
You were his caregiver after he lost his leg in an accident. What can you tell others about taking on that role?
I really don’t know, other than “be willing.” There were moments when I thought, I can’t do this. This is too much. Then I would literally go with what they teach in AA, which is “Do the next right thing.” That has saved me from so many tantrums.
Can you talk a bit about living in a small town? We’re losing our small towns.
Everybody just says, “Hey, Wy. How are you doing?” I can be myself and say, “I’m having a tough day,” and they’ll talk to me about what they’re doing, or their Aunt Ramona, or a farmer will tell me about his crops. Those simple, human conversations are such a gift. They keep me together. They literally hold me in a space that reminds me of my grandparents and what’s good, simple and sweet.
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