Lindsay Ell brings guitar, songwriting skills to the Gorge

MOSES LAKE — The road is where it all starts. It’s the forge and the hammer that shapes careers. It’s where flaws are exposed and dues are paid.

Having spent a decade learning about the music industry from the front of a stage, Stoney Creek Records’ artist Lindsay Ell is ready to take that next great step as a recording artist.

Ell just wrapped up the 2016 CMT’s Next Women of Country Tour with Jennifer Nettles and Brandy Clark. The 26-year-old Calgary native is a four-time Canadian Country Music Award nominee, including 2016 “Female Artist of the Year,” 2015 and 2014 “Rising Star of the Year” and 2014 “All Star Band (Guitar)” nominations.

Now the road brings her to the Columbia Basin where she is up on the main stage July 29 (2 p.m.) and again on Aug. 5 (3:30 p.m.) as part of the Watershed Festival at the Gorge Amphitheatre.

“I feel like I appreciate everything a lot more,” Ell said in a telephone interview from Nashville. “I’ve been playing and working for a long time honing my craft and developing as performer before taking my first serious try at being a recording artist and getting radio airplay gives me a foundation a lot of artists just don’t get.”

She is currently in the studio recording new music for her upcoming debut album for the BBR Music Group’s Stoney Creek Records.

She’s played all over the country, but there’s a few of those special places that make laying it down live, well special, The Gorge being one of them.

“I’ve never played Red Rocks (Morrison, Colo.), I really hope I can one day,” said Ell, who earned rave reviews for her debut single, “Trippin’ On Us,” a Top 15 hit on Canadian Country Radio. “The (Grand Ol’) Opry is for sure one of my favorite places. You walk onto that stage and you can’t even imagine how many legends have played there before me.

“The Gorge is another one of those venues. I enjoyed playing Watershed last year. After hearing Dave Matthews and John Mayer. I always dreamed as a little girl to be able to play a big music festival at the same venue. It’s such an incredible place to play. Standing on the stage, you can look behind you and see miles and miles and miles of this gorgeous country. It’s just mesmerizing.”

The thing is, Ell learned how to dream big from the get-go, but she had some major influences along the way that made it bigger than life. She was discovered by fellow Canadian Randy Bachman (Bachman-Turner Overdrive and the Guess Who) and later had a chance to open for blues legend Buddy Guy.

“Randy never told me what I needed to do,” said Ell, whose latest single “By The Way” was a Top 15 hit on Canadian Country radio and a bona fide critical smash. “He was more like ‘let’s go into the studio and write some songs.’ Learning how to write from someone like that. He taught me some great things when I was so young. He would sit and play all these crazy jazz chords and I would just say, ‘what was that?’ He really opened my mind with a lot of different genres in music.”

Learning to write songs from one part of Canada’s Lennon and McCartney (Randy Bachman/Burton Cummings) was like going to school. But playing with Buddy Guy was lesson in life.

“Playing with Buddy Guy when I was 18 was crazy. Here I am this blond, white girl opening for a blues pioneer,” she said with a laugh. “I’d be standing in the wings watching him play and he’d say, ‘How about that Lindsay Ell? Maybe we get her to come out and play a little bit. We played guitar for about 15 minutes. Later that night, he sat me down and said seeing me reminded him of seeing Bonnie Raitt play for the first time. To have Buddy Guy tell you that was just crazy.”

She learned songwriting from Randy Bachman and a passion for playing from blues legend Buddy Guy. Now, she’s ready to blend all that into her own brand of guitar and songwriting.

So who is Lindsay Ell?

“I guess that’s what I’m still trying to figure out,” she said.

Columbia Basin country fans and Ell will figure a little bit of that out next month when she takes the stage at the Watershed summer festival.