Country music star Lainey Wilson says she has never forgotten where she came from — a tiny Louisiana farm town where community, hard work, and faith shaped who she is today.
During an appearance on the “No Filter” podcast, the 33-year-old singer reflected on growing up in Baskin, Louisiana, a rural community with a population of only about 170 people.
“Where I’m from, it’s really just like a big farming community,” Wilson explained. “My daddy farms corn, wheat, soybeans, oats. Very blue-collar town. We don’t even have a red light. We have a caution light.”
Life in such a small place meant that privacy was almost nonexistent — but it also created a powerful sense of community.
“Everybody knows everybody,” she said. “It’s like the best thing and the worst thing… they’re there when you need ’em, and they’re there when you don’t. They’re just there.”
The conversation also touched on how rural communities are often misunderstood. Podcast host Kate Langbroek suggested that people in cities sometimes view small towns as closed-minded or unwelcoming.
Wilson pushed back on that perception.
“Oh, 100%,” she agreed when Langbroek said the reality is often the opposite.
“My folks especially — they’re the kind of people who would get a call in the middle of the night and go help the neighbor,” Wilson said. “They would give you the shirt off their back. That’s the kind of people that I’m from.”
While Wilson is now one of country music’s biggest stars, she emphasized that her success was anything but overnight.
The singer spent 15 years building her career, including a stretch where she lived in a 20-foot camper trailer in Nashville for three years while chasing her dream.
She knocked on doors along Music Row, passed out CDs, and auditioned repeatedly for television singing competitions.
“I tried out for ‘American Idol’ probably seven times,” Wilson revealed. “Tried out for ‘The Voice’ a handful of times.”
She never made it past the first round in those shows — something she now sees as a blessing.
“I’m so thankful that it worked out the way that it did,” she said. “But there were definitely times where I thought, ‘I must be absolutely insane to not pack my stuff up and move home.’”
Even during the hardest years, Wilson said she felt a sense of faith and certainty that she was on the right path.
“I had a weird sense of peace,” she explained. “I was just holding on to that feeling of like, this is what I was supposed to do.”
Her breakthrough finally came in 2021, when her single “Things a Man Oughta Know” reached No. 1 on country radio. The success quickly snowballed.
Wilson won CMA New Artist of the Year in 2022, landed a role on the hit TV show “Yellowstone,” and later took home the CMA Entertainer of the Year award in both 2024 and 2025.
The recognition still feels surreal to her.
“It was one of those things where now I’m getting invited to the CMA Awards and sitting at the same table as these people,” Wilson said. “And then they start treating you like you’re one of them.”
Moments like that often take her back to childhood.
“I remember being a little girl watching those awards shows thinking, ‘Man, it’d be really cool if I could be down there in the mix with those people,’” she said.
Now that she’s reached that stage, Wilson says the most meaningful validation comes from the people she once admired.
“When your peers and the people you look up to are proud for you and voting for you,” she said, “it makes you feel like that little 9-year-old girl wasn’t that crazy after all.”
