Wendy Correa’s Long Game: Music, Sobriety, and My Pretty Baby 

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“Hello, I’m Richard.”  

That’s how the door opened for Wendy Correa — Ringo at the threshold, sobriety on the other side. The handshake at her very first AA meeting didn’t fix anything overnight; it simply gave her proof that recovery is human, possible and sometimes standing there with a Beatles grin.   

Wendy’s story arcs like a mixtape: LA label years that were glittering and gritty; a DUI that snapped the soundtrack; a late-night audition in a tiny booth where knobs and sliders looked like a spaceship; and a mountain town where the request line rang at 4 a.m. with a familiar gravelly voice asking for Warren Zevon.   

She had spent a decade in the industry — A&R floors buzzing, Geffen-era stories that could keep you up till last call — only to find that “fun” and “easy” weren’t the same thing, especially for women staring at the glass ceiling long before #MeToo had a hashtag. “It was a lot of fun, but it was not easy,” she says, and that sentence lands like a chorus you already know.   

Then came the deal she whispered to the universe: If Aspen is meant for me, give me a DJ job. One phone call later, she was in the KSPN lobby, résumé full of label life, heart full of nerves. The program director slid her into a downstairs booth with a Ricky Lee Jones CD and said, prove it. Wendy queued the track, took a breath, and found her voice: “Wendy Moore here on KSPN-FM, Roaring Fork Radio…” She got the job. Sometimes you’re not waiting for a sign — you’re delivering one into the mic.   

Aspen turned into a chapter that could only be written at altitude. There were double shifts and side gigs (Aspen rent is undefeated), and there was also Hunter S. Thompson — calling in song requests at an hour when only coyotes and DJs are awake, later asking if she’d work with him. Imagine learning to ride the rollercoaster while the rollercoaster operator phones in Warren Zevon at 4 a.m. and then hires you. That was Wendy’s classroom.   

But the point of her story isn’t celebrity proximity; it’s proximity to herself. Wendy got sober in 1987 — day one stamped during the first South by Southwest — and she built recovery the way people build homes: piece by piece, with help. “I sought out Buddhism and meditation and nature and hiking,” she says. “I started going to AA… later Nicotine Anonymous. I also did psychotherapy and journaling.” When new family revelations shook the ground decades later, she added EMDR and IMTT to the mix — modalities that helped take the “zing” out of triggers without erasing the truth.   

A few lines linger. On what that first AA meeting meant: “If Ringo Starr can get sober, so can I.” On recovery as a practice, not a finish line: “There is no magic bullet… You have to work.” On chosen family: keep the people who mirror back your worth. These aren’t slogans — they’re field notes from someone who’s hiked the long way home.   

Her forthcoming memoir, “My Pretty Baby,” reaches into childhood innocence and what came after, threading grief, secrecy and intergenerational trauma into a narrative about what it means to heal without pretending it was easy. The cover image — little Wendy, bangs and a doll — holds a kind of time-travel tenderness. The book’s title points right at her: the pretty baby who didn’t know what was coming, but who would eventually write her own ending.   

If you’re early on your path, Wendy’s episode is a reminder that recovery is cumulative. Stack what works: the meeting that feels safe, the therapist who helps you rewire the fear, the hike that lets your nervous system settle, the song that puts your breath back where it belongs. If you’re a few decades in, it’s a nudge to keep layering practices as life changes. “Life continues and you have to continue to need helpers along the way,” she says. That’s not weakness; that’s wisdom.   

Listen for the stories. Stay for the tools. And if your recovery ever needs a sign, maybe imagine a friendly Beatle at the door, saying “Hello.” The rest is up to you.  

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