On a recent early afternoon Nancy Wilson, one of rock’s greatest acoustic guitarists, is in the studio space of her Sonoma County, California wine country home when we connect on the phone. There are guitars all around her. “Trying to keep my mojo going,” she kids.

Heart, her Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame band with her big sister Ann Wilson, the band’s supersonic singer, resumes their latest tour soon.

Early in her life, Nancy was drawn to acoustic guitar by artists like The Beatles, Paul Simon and Neil Young.

“Even Elton John, his piano style was really big influence on my acoustic playing because it’s really percussive,” Nancy says. “And it’s not in any way timid, the way I feel acoustic, so it’s not like a girly way that I play. And I think that’s one of the signature things I brought into the Heart band when I joined in 1975 when the first album [‘Dreamboat Annie,’ released the next year] was being made.”

Heart’s signature ‘70s songs include thrashy “Barracuda” and witchy rocker “Magic Man.” In the ensuing years, the band detoured into disco, with slinky hit “Straight On,” and tried on funky R&B, with their single “Even It Up.”

During the MTV era, the Wilson sisters reinvented with sleek hits like “Nothin’ at All,” “What About Love?” and “Never.”

The band even scored their first number one hit with ethereal 1986 single “These Dreams,” featuring a rare turn by Nancy, a talented backing vocalist, singing lead for Heart. A year later Heart topped the chart again, Ann back on the mic, with the wistful “Alone.”

Nancy says now of the band’s flashy ‘80s days, “The [music] videos are very dated looking, of course, because of fashion. But the songs, like ‘These Dreams’ and ‘Alone’ for instance, and ‘What About Love?,’ I always say this, but it’s true. It could be from any era.

“Like ‘Alone,’ I could picture a French chanteuse with a cigarette in a cafe singing that song in World War I, you know? It’s a timeless kind of melodic structure that would translate into any part of history. It’s not dated because it’s somebody who’s pining for someone else, as we do as humans.”

Nancy recalls how while at storied California studio Record Plant working on “These Dreams,” she stepped into an isolation booth to cut a placeholder vocal over the basic track. Just so she could listen back later and improve it.

“I had a pretty bad cold,” Nancy says with an easy laugh, “but I was singing it anyway just to have it, and people were like, wow, that sounds really cool. So we ended up keeping it because it sounded passionate, you know, like, she’s just crying with all of her soul about this. I thought it was a smart move on [Ron Nevinson] the producer’s part to keep that in, because it became very hooky in the song as well.”

Not many big ‘70s rock bands were savvy and skilled enough to remain hit-makers in the ‘80s, but Heart was. Still, Heart’s true soul is when Ann’s lithe vocals weave around Nancy’s wizardly acoustic, sisterly harmonies intertwining.

This is most famously heard on their classic hit “Crazy On You,” which features Nancy’s famous extended guitar intro, which is known as “Silver Wheels.” “The intro braids classical and flamenco guitar styles played with rock and roll spirit. As Nancy puts it, “Just whatever the acoustic guitar can do.”

She gets a kick out of how many fans post videos on social media of themselves playing the “Silver Wheels” intro to “Crazy on You.” She says, “So many people have mastered it, and everybody does it slightly different, and it’s like, wow. And I never do it the same way twice. But it’s really cool that from the first few notes of the song, when it’s the live Heart show, they know exactly what that is.”

Later, “Silver Wheels” was formerly used as a title for another prime example of Nancy’s acoustic prowess. It’s a standalone instrumental track on 1980 album “Be Le Strange,” one of the band’s best, even though it was a hit then is somewhat unheralded now.

Nancy says, “I think there’s something redeemable on pretty much every Heart album. But some are produced better than others. Some of them, you really have to go mining for gold to find the coolest song. But ‘Bebe Le Strange’ holds up really well, and so does [1977 album] ‘Little Queen’ and [’78’s] ‘Dog & Butterfly,’ and a lot of them really do. Even some of the stuff we did later in the ‘90s, like ‘Red Velvet Car’ has some really cool stuff, and ‘Fanatic’ has some cool stuff. But we just keep on making music because that’s what we do. We’re artists who want to keep creating.”

These days, the Wilsons front a Heart lineup with guitarists Ryan Waters and Ryan Wariner, keyboardist Paul Moak, bassist Tony Lucido and drummer Sean T. Lane. The band’s ongoing “Royal Flush Tour” comes to Birmingham, Alabama’s Legacy Arena at the BJCC 7:30 p.m. June 20. Tickets start at $43 plus applicable fees via ticketmaster.com or the BJCC Central Ticket Office. Heart’s Birmingham show is “an evening with,” so just the headliner with no opening act.

The band’s “Royal Flush Tour” setlists are full of hits. There are also fan faves though, like the slinky “Bebe Le Strange” title track. Hippie-folk gems like “Love Alive,” “Dreamboat Annie” and “Dog & Butterfly” spotlight the Wilsons’ elemental magic.

Nancy relishes playing electric guitar too, and does with flair. On this tour her “main boyfriend” electrics, as she puts it, are a ‘70s Gibson SG and ‘60s Fender Telecaster.

For years, Heart was based in Seattle, where they became heroes to dudes in local bands like Soundgarden, Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam. Decades later, Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell gave an impassioned speech for Heart’s Rock Hall induction. The band’s influenced multiple generations of female rockers of course, including more recent bands like Halestorm and Plush.

Back in the ‘70s, Heart was founded in a waterside cottage in Vancouver next to a hippie commune. In addition to Ann and Nancy, the band’s Rock Hall-inducted lineup featured guitarist Roger Fisher (brother of former Heart manager Michael Fisher, Ann’s former partner who inspired the lyrics to “Magic Man”), guitarist Howard Leese (later a member of Bad Company), bassist Steve Fossen, and drummer Michael Derosier.

There were successful female-centered rock bands before Heart, like Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother and the Holding Company. But Heart was the first hard-rock band fronted by sisters to break big.

Daughters of a Marine officer and a seamstress, the Wilsons wielded a fierce feminine version of sibling chemistry that previously propelled brother-led groups like The Kinks and Allman Brothers.

Back in the day, Heart involved Fleetwood Mac style intra-band drama and they have the “Behind The Music” episode to prove it. Ann and Nancy’s excellent 2012 memoir “Kicking & Dreaming” is a far superior recounting of the band’s saga.

A few years ago, Ann and Nancy endured a rough patch in their relationship, as many siblings do. Both pivoted to solo projects. They’ve since mended fences and the world is better off when the Wilson sisters are making music together. Especially given Ann’s battled cancer recently.

Heart is one of many notable bands that revolve around lead singer and star guitarist “dynamic duos.” The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger and Keith Richards set the pace, latter echoed by the likes of Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.

Asked about the appeal of that archetype, Nancy says, “Well, I think there’s a symmetry in two. There’s a relationship between two front people like Page and Plant, you know, Rick Nielsen and Robin Zander in Cheap Trick, the brothers in Oasis. And it’s just a pattern that’s satisfying. You have two front people, so it keeps things more interesting than one lead person. And also, the relationship and the communication between those people.”

Of her duo dynamic with her sister, Nancy says, “When I play live with Ann on stage no matter what’s going on around us, it’s just always a million thrills because we’ve got this language, we speak together on a big rock stage that’s frozen in time. It holds its own gravity, and it’s really, really, really special.”

Having interviewed Ann previously, I can attest they’re two shades of cool. In conversation, Ann’s serious and cerebral. Nancy’s easygoing and playful.

Nancy tapped into her rock life for her work on “Almost Famous,” the beloved 2000 film written and directed by Nancy’s then-husband Cameron Crowe. She and fellow ‘70s rock star Peter Frampton coached the film’s cast portraying fictional band Stillwater. “You know, here’s how you hold an electric guitar. Here’s how you slouch with one. And watching live footage of Zeppelin and other bands, notice how low the guitar is slung — it’s embarrassing if it’s up too high. Like all the little rock rules. That it was fun to share with the actors and they did a great job.”

Nancy also cowrote Stillwater’s songs for the movie, including “Fever Dog,” which Ann also had a hand in. At Heart shows, Nancy says, “people are still requesting that song, by the way. We’ve actually played it a couple of times just for fun.”

Nancy also contributed instrumental passages to the “Almost Famous” score. For that, she used a 100-year-old Gibson mandolin. “Cameron’s story really lent to bringing the mandolin out. That’s the sound you cannot imitate, it’s just got so much soul in it.” She says her “Almost Famous” recordings, “gave me a chance to really stretch out musically with some keyboard stuff and some percussion that I did on that.”

She also contributed to music for films like “Singles,” “Vanilla Sky,” “Jerry Maguire” and “Say Anything.” But Nancy says “Almost Famous” was “my favorite because it embodied the era from which I sprang.” One of the scenes she related to most in “Almost Famous” was the one where Stillwater get into petty arguments backstage about their new merch T-shirt.

The Wilsons lifelong friend Sue Ennis has played a huge role in Heart’s career. Ennis has cowritten around 80 songs with the sisters, including aforementioned classics “Straight On,” “Dog & Butterfly” and “Even It Up.” Ennis was also in The Lovemongers, a Wilson side-project whose song “Sand” Heart performs live. Nancy lauds Sue’s ear, musicality and songwriting. “We just vibe off each other really beautifully. We’ve been friends since I was 12.”

For years, Heart was based in Seattle, where they became heroes to dudes in local bands like Soundgarden, Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam. Decades later, Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell gave an impassioned speech for Heart’s Rock Hall induction. The band’s influenced multiple generations of female rockers too of course, from Sheryl Crow to Halestorm to Plush.

Some of Nancy’s guitars in her home studio during our phoner are tuned normally. Others are in alternate tunings, like the tuning Page used on Zeppelin epic “The Rain Song” and the one Eddie Van Halen did for Van Halen nose-breaker “Unchained.” Heart has deep history with both bands.

Back when they were a bar band, Heart played several Zeppelin covers, and Zep’s sound later significantly informed Heart songs like “Barracuda” and “Magic Man.” They cover a couple Zeppelin songs in the current set too.

In 2012, when Led Zeppelin was feted at the Kennedy Center Honors, Ann and Nancy teamed with late Zep drummer John Bonham’s son Jason Bonham and a choir for a stirring version of “Stairway to Heaven” that brought tears to Plant’s eyes and a standing ovation.

In the late ‘70s, Van Halen teamed with Heart for a tour with its share of young rocker hijinks. On that tour, Nancy learned that Eddie, who was revolutionizing rock electric guitar playing at warp speed, didn’t own an acoustic. She bought him one. Later he called her from his hotel room and played the guitar for her over the phone.

After Eddie died in 2020 after a long battle with cancer, Nancy wrote a guitar instrumental dedicated to him. Titled “4 Edward,” she released the track in 2021. She performs the tribute in Heart’s current set.

“He had a real amazing way about him,” Nancy says of Eddie. “He had this sweetness and kind of in an innocent happiness. You hear it in the music they wrote, and you see it when you watch them play, because Eddie was always smiling. And the music smiles. He just loved that he was actually getting away with doing this music in America. [In the early ‘60s, the Van Halen family immigrated to the U.S. from the Netherlands with just $50 and a piano.] It was just so sweet the way we kind of connected and we became close and really admired each other and felt like friends.”

A decade before she made music for big movies, Nancy was in one. She had a great cameo in 1982’s “Fast Times At Ridgemont High.” That’s her in the sportscar when Judge Reinhold’s character tries to flirt at a stoplight, forgetting he’s wearing a pirate outfit for his job at a seafood restaurant. “And that’s when I realized I’m not cut out to be an actor,” Nancy says. “I’m definitely a musician, I’m a night worker.”