For better and for worse, our hometowns make us who we are. Country star Lainey Wilson has spoken fondly of her days growing up on a farm in Baskin, a tiny Northeast Louisiana village of roughly 200 people. “When you grow up somewhere like I did with the kind of people that I did, you can’t help but to be country,” she has said.
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However, one drawback of small-town living is the virtual inability to keep your secrets. So when a law enforcement official wrote Wilson, then 15, a speeding ticket on a rural Louisiana highway, all of Baskin had likely heard the news by lunchtime. Fortunately, the reigning Entertainer of the Year, 33, recently got the last laugh.
As of November 2024, a stretch of Louisiana Highway 15, which passes from LA Highway 577 to the parish line at Big Creek through Baskin, was renamed Lainey Wilson Highway. And when the “Somewhere Over Laredo” singer arrived in town for the naming ceremony, she didn’t need to ask for directions.
“Same place that I got a ticket when I was 15 years old,” Wilson revealed in this week’s Southern Living cover story. “I was like, ‘Nana nana boo boo.’”
How Lainey Wilson Stays Grounded
Now Wilson has a failsafe excuse if she ever gets caught with a lead foot in her hometown again. And there are plenty of opportunities, as the Grammy winner visits home every chance she gets.
“But yeah, my granny lives like a mile from my parents. And I just go sit down with her for a little bit—kind of catch up, take it easy, and do all the things that I grew up doing,” Wilson said. “Even this past weekend, me and my sister were cleaning my granny’s house and just doing what we’ve always done. And I don’t know any other way.”
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Naturally, the “Watermelon Moonshine” singer is quite popular when she returns home to Baskin. However, she tells Southern Living that it has nothing to do with her meteoric rise in country music.
“I think the thing that has helped me keep one foot on the ground is just keeping my people close—the ones that know Lainey and not Lainey Wilson,” she said. I go home to Baskin, and everybody’s trying to stop by and see me. But it’s not because of everything that’s going on; it’s just because they want to stop by and see me, you know? And just making sure that I’m taking the time to do the things that make me feel like Lainey, the sister and friend and daughter.”
Featured image by Jason Howard/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
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