If Lindsay Ell was a little bit country when she crashed onto the Nashville scene, it ultimately proved to be a little too much to bear. Of course, the Canadian native was appreciative of the attention she drew from the Music City and beyond, earning raves from established artists as far back as 2014.
That’s when Ell made her Grand Ole Opry debut, went on the Band Perry’s “We Are Pioneers World Tour”, began winning music awards, and solidified her spot in the second class of CMT’s Next Women of Country. Among the members who performed on stage for the induction event co-hosted by Leslie Fram and Lee Ann Womack at Nashville’s City Winery that year were Ell, Kelsea Ballerini, Mickey Guyton, Maddie & Tae, and Jana Kramer.
Yet something was missing. Ell decided to tell her intriguing story during an hour-long Zoom interview with PopMatters on 2 October ahead of the 24 October release of her new EP, fence sitter (Universal Music Canada). The Calgary-born singer-songwriter-guitarist frankly fills in the gaps that began with a promising Nashville career, took a turn toward tasty pop, and were interrupted by revelations of personal struggles with sexual assault and an eating disorder.
After happily living “in almost every neighborhood in Nashville” for 15 years but pondering an eventual move to either New York City or Los Angeles, Lindsay Ell is ebullient while addressing the past, present, and future. On the verge of having “new music coming out that needs to be talked about”, she adds (with a laugh) that sitting in a room and discussing her latest project is “my favorite place to be”.
That might be especially true after a “real crazy” summer touring for the second straight year as co-Canadian Shania Twain’s lead guitarist and backing vocalist after opening for her in 2023. In between concerts, Ell would fly back and forth for her own shows. Yet nothing could beat a date with Twain, “one of my childhood heroes,” in Calgary’s Saddledome.
The first concert Ell ever attended was there, watching Metallica. After previously performing at her hometown venue, playing it on 5 July with “Shania just seems like a really special bucket list thing to check off, you know, that I never even knew was going to be on my bucket list, in all honesty.” (laughs)
Risk-Taker and Reinventor
The five-song pop-oriented EP is only 17 minutes long, but listeners will want to keep fence sitter on repeat for the desired effect. Lindsay Ell hopes to get feedback from “all the amazing fans” who’ve stayed loyal throughout her career and have “them feel like a deeper sense of vulnerability in my songwriting and even the way I play live,” she shares. “Being able to explore new sonic spaces that I haven’t been able to explore previously.
“When I look back on the last decade or so in the past, I feel like I’m just taking bigger risks than I ever have in the studio, and really being able to make the music that I’ve always heard in my brain, but just was too scared to do that. It makes my little 1975 heart happy,” referring to one of her favorite bands, not the year.
Calling it a “reinvention”, she coproduced the EP with Doug Schadt in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he lives, and the process took about three or four months. Calling Schadt “one of the smartest people I’ve ever met”, Ell adds, “He’s never scared of an idea or a direction. He’s always down to chase whatever we think is cool.”
Having previously said, “This EP is me sharing my story in real time, as I peel back the layers and try to see what my next chapter might be,” Lindsay Ell gets asked if she knows what that next chapter will be.
“Sonically and musically, I feel I do,” she offers. “Personally, I have absolutely no idea. (laughs) And I think why I love writing and songwriting so much is that it’s a way to explore the personal questions that I have about life, and a way to sometimes figure them out. Or at least get to understand them deeper and get you closer to an answer.”
From her EP, she cites enjoyable moments on songs like “good guy” (“makes you want to dance”) and “magic” (“that I can really stretch and lean into with my band”).
Getting away from a structured show that includes full production where “everything is timed out live” is another goal, she says. “I just want to get back to the place of just being a band onstage where every show is different and I don’t use tracks anymore and I’m a lot more of, like, I can turn on a dime musically,” Ell maintains. “That’s when I’m the happiest onstage, and that’s when I think I put on the best show.”
Getting Personal
While touring in 2026 is definitely on her agenda (eight North American dates are currently listed on her website), Lindsay Ell continues to contemplate one of life’s most important questions that is addressed in the EP’s pretty title track. “I don’t wanna end up looking back / And wish I had a life like that / If it’s one thing or the other? / Do I wanna be a mother?”
“It’s a question that’s been really loud recently,” Ell replies when asked if she wants to have kids one day. “I’ve always asked myself that question and just felt like I had a lot of time to figure it out. Now I’m in my mid-30s and know I don’t have much time to figure that out. As a woman, there’s a finite number of years I have to figure that out, and yet also as an artist, it’s complicated. It’s definitely not impossible.
“I’m so grateful to be surrounded by a lot of really talented female artist friends who all have children, who have recently had children, and have had children for a long time. Hearing all parts of their story and getting to pick their brain and getting to hear them talk about it has been very inspiring and very mind-opening in all sorts of ways.”
Lindsay Ell is particularly impressed by three female artists in Nashville who have children and play occasional dates for a show called “Mother” — Jillian Jacqueline (whose new album MotherDaughterSisterWife was released last week), Caitlyn Smith, and Lucie Silvas. “They talk about how hard it is to be a mom and how amazing it is to be a mom, and sing songs that they have written about being a mom,” Ell reports. “It’s been so wonderful to hear them and watch them build this little show.”
Ell also consults with another Nashville musician friend, Maggie Rose, whose first baby, a son, was born on 13 April. “I love her so much. I actually heard all four of them do a live podcast (Rose’s Salute the Songbird) a few weeks ago,” Ell proclaims. “It was really inspiring to hear all of them talk about, ‘OK, obviously having a baby is incredible, the best thing I’ve ever done, I know a love now that I never would have been able to know before, but it’s also hard.’ …
“I don’t have kids obviously, but hearing all these stories, I’m just like, ‘Wow, I think being a touring artist is hard enough.’ Adding a human being on top of that, like, sometimes I think taking care of a dog and traveling as much as I do is hard. (laughs) But I can leave my dog with a friend and call it a day, and I know you can’t do that with a kid. (laughs) I’ve just been thinking a lot about all those things—about not knowing if I’m ready, about not knowing if I’ll say I’m not ready for the rest of my life, and about not knowing if I’ll regret not having a kid and asking those questions.
“The only thing I, like, know in my heart right now is now is not the time,” reveals Lindsay Ell, who pleasantly discloses being in a relationship. “But it’s felt really good to keep that part of my life private and give him some privacy, too. I’m not married yet, and I know if I do want kids, I would want to get married. So maybe that’s the first place I should start. I don’t know!” (laughs)
For the Love of a Guitar
The subject of starting a family is likely a topic of discussion during trips back to Calgary to see her parents, Bob and Suzanne Ell. “My older brother (Shawn) and I joke all the time because my brother doesn’t have kids as well,” Ell explains. “He and I are always like, ‘Our parents want grandkids so bad, so bad. Neither of us has provided them with grandkids yet, and I don’t know if that’s gonna happen for either one of us.” (laughs)
At the very least, memories will linger of their daughter and son growing up. Bob Ell brought Lindsay to country-bluegrass camps after she gave up the piano for a guitar at age eight upon finding his collection of string instruments at home. Then at age 13, Ell credits getting “discovered” by fellow Canadian Randy Bachman (the Guess Who, Bachman-Turner Overdrive), who later called her “the most talented and multifaceted artist I’ve come across in many years”.
“I met Randy through a songwriting buddy of mine,” Lindsay Ell recalls. “Randy was the guy who taught me how to write a song and taught me how to record in a professional recording studio. Really got me into Stevie Ray Vaughan and (Jimi) Hendrix and (Eric) Clapton when I was in my teens. I just dove so deeply into the world of blues, jazz, and rock guitar, all thanks to Randy.
“He was the one who introduced me to the people who offered me my first record deal and got me started with Gibson Guitars way back in the day, and really connected me to some people in Nashville. Without Randy, I think my career could have had a much different start. He is still so inspiring. The guy just turned 82, I believe, and he’s still touring! He’s the epitome of if you love something, you will do it for the rest of your life.”
Lindsay Ell also remembers one of her favorite pieces of advice from him, comparing the music business to an emotional roller coaster with a lot of ups and downs: “Your goal is just to figure out how you can, like, ride in the middle. As long as you can try to figure out a way to coast, and not take yourself too high or not take yourself too low, you’ll be fine.”
The Making of The Project
Becoming a country star wasn’t Ell’s initial intention. “When I first came to Nashville, I had my heart set on making a female John Mayer record,” she points out. “Then I got offered a country record deal and was like, ‘All right! I can still do what I want to do and still make music that is exactly how I feel in my heart.’ After being wound so tightly in the way that, like, a lot of country radio ticks, I found myself more focused on what I thought was going to be successful in country radio than what I actually wanted to create. …
“For my first radio tours, program directors were always so sweet to me. They’re like, ‘Lindsay, you’re so cool, but you’re not country.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I know, but the format’s growing and becoming wider.’ There was a part of me that always knew that I wanted to use other sonic sounds in the studio, but I think I was just too scared to go there.”
Making a permanent move to Nashville in 2010, the 21-year-old Lindsay Ell signed with Stoney Creek Records. While she learned her craft and toured with the likes of Buddy Guy, it wasn’t until 2017 that she released her first full-length studio album, but what a record The Project was.
Wanting to lean more toward pop by then, while still signed to a country label that “needed a country single to send to country radio”, Ell relied on guidance from her producer, Kristian Bush, who had been one-half of the famed duo Sugarland with Jennifer Nettles.
He gave Ell what she calls an important musical lesson. “Kristian’s just so cool. He was like, ‘What’s your favorite album? What’s your desert island record?’ And I’m like, ‘Obviously, Continuum by John Mayer.’ And he’s like, ‘Cool. I want you to re-record that entire album. I want you to take every instrument on that record and re-record it and hand it in. This is your homework assignment, and you have two weeks. Go.’”
After tirelessly working from 8:00pm to 3:00am every day to successfully complete the assignment (her Continuum version was released in 2018), Lindsay Ell began recording The Project, cowriting nine of its 12 songs. “It ended up landing in, like, not just a country space but also a bluesier space because that’s really how I learned to play guitar, you know, mainly from a blues perspective,” she recollects. “When I, like, really clicked into the groove as a musician.”
The Project reached the top spot on Nielsen Soundscan’s country albums chart in August 2017. Ell was recognized as only the second solo female artist to reach number one with a debut album that year. That same month, she performed on NBC’s Today show and was called “a true triple threat” by Nashville daily The Tennessean. In the story, country music historian Robert Oermann is quoted as saying, “There aren’t a whole lot of guitar-slinging women out there. She could be a country Bonnie Raitt if she wanted to be. She’s a real talent.”
Ell later went on the Weekend Warrior World Tour to open for Brad Paisley, who delivered the highest of compliments in that same article: “When you think of the list of all the best attributes you could throw into a blender to create a musical artist, such as soulful vocals, writing chops, ability to play the fire out of a guitar, being gorgeous, and not to mention class and kindness, Lindsay is all of it. Here’s to her future.”
Looking back at recording The Project, Lindsay Ell contends, “I’m coming back to the place of walking into a studio and just doing what I think sounds cool. Working with Kristian, he was so drawn to those things. Like, ‘What’s fun?’ Like, ‘Let’s play what’s fun!’ I was playing a lot more freely live. I didn’t have tracks at the beginning of that era of my career. I felt artistically a lot freer than, you know, that next seven-year period of my career where I think I was just so intently chasing a number one on country radio that I, like, lost sight of that.”
Yet another ambitious project was on the way, but so was COVID-19.
Heart of the Matter
“Heart Theory is like such an important record to me in so many different ways. I got to work with one of my producer heroes, Dann Huff, a guitar player that I will always look up to for the rest of my life,” Ell declares. “Dann Huff is like one of the nicest guys and also one of the smartest producers. He can do anything and make it sound cool, and the process of recording that whole record, I will never forget it.
“Playing guitar in front of Dann was one of the most stressful things and one of my favorite things. (laughs) Just because he was so cool. He wouldn’t tell me what to play. He would be like, ‘Yeah, Linds, that sounds great! How about you try playing a B-flat at the start?’”
Like with so many artists in 2020, Lindsay Ell’s plans to release it early that year were interrupted by the dreaded coronavirus. She co-wrote 11 of the 12 songs on the full-length concept album, but “I don’t love you” wasn’t one of them. Released to country radio in the US on 9 December 2019, just before COVID-19 arrived, the album’s lead single received critical praise and peaked at number 48 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart.
“When COVID hit, radio program directors just kind of got back to the label, and they’re like, ‘Hey, we can’t play a song that says ‘I don’t love you’ anymore. Like, it’s just not the vibe. It’s not the time.’ And so a song we put so much heart into, and I felt had such potential —it just wasn’t the right time. Therefore, it didn’t happen. When it could’ve happened had it been a different time.”
According to Ell, she continued to get messages from fans who loved Heart Theory, saying, “That record saved my life”, or “The record got me through such a hard time.”
She looks back proudly, asserting, “It’s amazing to know that music meant something to people. I had my heart so set on that record doing things that it just never was given the opportunity to do. It kind of started this other chapter of my life that I didn’t see coming, you know.”
Another song she co-wrote with Brandy Clark, “Make You”, sheds light on her being a survivor of sexual assault. “Everybody has a story, and unfortunately, I think that a lot of us go through childhood trauma. Yet I believe that it’s those experiences that make us who we are,” Lindsay Ell conveys. “That are so deeply transformative to how we show up in the world, and the things that we learn and the things that we believe. I feel it would almost be a disservice to myself and to any of my fans listening to my music if I didn’t write about those things.”
Ell decided to write “make you” after working with an organization called Youth for Tomorrow and traveling to West Virginia to help victims of sex trafficking and sexual assault from the ages of 12 to 18 launch their music program.
She sat at a conference table next to a 12-year-old girl who opened up to her, saying, “My parents sold me to a sex trafficking company when I was little.”
Moved by the youngster who “had like this light in her eyes and in her heart” while continuing her horrific story, Ell thought, “My God, if this little girl can say that story and make me feel so inspired and so not alone, then who am I to think my story can’t help somebody else? From that moment forward, I knew I needed to write a song about my journey with sexual assault.”
The song “make you” was released on World Forgiveness Day and motivated Lindsay Ell to create the Make You Movement, a charitable fund to help survivors of sexual assault and domestic abuse, along with at-risk youth. Here are the song’s opening lyrics: Thirteen, staring in the mirror / You still look so innocent /
But that was all gone yesterday / At 18, you’ll see it a little clearer / As something that was taken / Before you could give it away.”
In a 2020 interview with People magazine, Ell said, “I was raped when I was 13, and it happened again when I was 21. The song only talks about the first time.”
Stoney Creek Records pushed back the release date of Heart Theory, a full-length concept album that explores seven stages of grief, to 14 August. American Songwriter called it a “masterpiece”.
Meanwhile, the delays and the pandemic gave Lindsay Ell time to think. “I started asking myself a lot of questions. After Heart Theory, I had some real tough decisions to make,” she reflects.
One was deciding to replace her entire team. Another was insisting to herself, “I need to make the music that I feel I need to make, regardless of how it’s gonna do. So these past couple of years have just been my refiguring it out and getting back to, obviously, like the girl who walked into the studio to make The Project, and that’s felt really good.”
Those teenage years continued to haunt her in 2023, though. “I did not see that coming whatsoever,” Ell admits. “I ended up developing an eating disorder from what happened to me as a kid when I was 13 to now, 20 years later, when I was, ‘This is just the way I live and I’m a female artist, so I have to be skinny and that’s how I’m going to be successful.’ Going through ED treatment, and really rewiring my brain around all of that. It was a huge change, not only my relationship with food but the way I live my life.
“Maybe I could connect with somebody who feels the same. My story might encourage them to get help, or go get therapy, or even have awareness about what they may be feeling.”
Wishing and Hoping
With fence sitter finally out in the world this week, Lindsay Ell is looking forward to what will happen in 2026 and beyond, saying, “When I think of where I’m bringing my music next year, it comes back to that question: What’s fun?” Figuring this could be another fun question, Ell was asked if she could single out one gratifying part of her career thus far. “Oh my gosh,” she exclaims. “One? That’s such a question. My goodness!”
Pausing for a few moments, she narrows it down to getting to work with two of her favorite people, first referring to Twain as “a powerhouse” and the Energizer Bunny on the road. After covering his “Stop This Train” on a 2017 EP, another thrill was to meet Mayer, who asked her to be one of the six guitarists to appear with him in a Silver Sky SE commercial he shot in 2022. “To be able to, like, meet your musical heroes and to work with them … have just been like two career-defining moments,” she declares. “Like, oh, I guess if you do work really, really, really hard and you believe in yourself enough, then maybe life does bring you down some crazy paths. Paths you never saw coming.”
She’s optimistically started a long wish list of potential collaborators, too. They range from Ed Sheeran and Shawn Mendes (another “fellow Canadian”) to Sheryl Crow and Taylor Swift. Giving kudos to the former country artist whose The Life of a Showgirl was released the day after this interview, Ell states Swift is “the ultimate example of how to pour artistry into your music and make it universally relatable.”
Lindsay Ell also isn’t sitting on the fence when announcing which venues top her bucket list of places still to play, either. “I feel like I’m still a toddler and I have a lot of things to accomplish in this life,” she notes. “I’ve actually never been to Red Rocks (the outdoors amphitheater west of Denver). I would love to headline Red Rocks one day. Headlining (New York’s Madison Square Garden) has been at the top of my bucket list ever since I was a tiny human.” Qualifying that by mentioning a previous hop onstage for a song there, she added, “But to me and my weird mind, that doesn’t count.”
Ell, yeah! Even if a little bit of country still exists, it’s her rebellious rock ’n’ roll spirit that will live forever.
