Thu 7/2 @ 7:30PM
Toronto singer-songwriter Lindi Ortega kicked around that city’s music scene for a decade as an indie artist with a traditional country approach to singing — think Dolly Parton or Emmylou Harris — amassing a lot of laudatory reviews and Canadian music awards.
Despite her music hardly dovetailing with contemporary country’s shallow party music, a few years ago she moved to Nashville where she recorded her third album with the very old-school country name: Cigarettes & Truckstops. But at the same time, she was getting wider attention for stepping outside that sphere, touring with punk rockers Social Distortion and working as a backup singer for the Killers’ Brandon Flowers’ solo project.
Her fourth album Faded Gloryville is due out in August. She told Rolling Stone Magazine recently that it was inspired by the has-been country start reduced to playing bowling alleys in the 2009 movie Crazy Heart.
“It’s about how much faith you need to put into whatever you’re doing, and how hard it is to keep that faith,” she told the magazine. “Everyone starts off in this business with huge dreams. Years later, after being signed to a major label, then getting dropped, then getting signed to an indie label, I realized that the dreams I had at the beginning were a bit naive. Metaphorically, Faded Gloryville is a state of mind where you’ve gone from being so excited about something to so tired, and you realize it’s not quite what you thought it was gonna be.”
But, she says, it’s about more than lost dreams of stardom.
“Faded Gloryville isn’t just about music,” she said. “It’s about anything that brings you down, whether it’s dreams not coming true or relationships not working out, and its message is this: you can go to place where you’re feeling really down about things, but it’s what you do afterwards — do you decide to reside there forever, or do you leave and make the situation better — that matters. You have to travel through Faded Gloryville to get to Paradise.”
She’s got some heavy touring on the schedule this summer, which will bring her and her band to Lorain County’s Riverdog Barn. It’s a BYOB venue where you can bring a cooler and a picnic, or buy something from the food truck that Rocky River’s River Dog Café will have set up on location. Gates open at 6 and food will be available then. Emily Keener opens the show.
Admission is a $15 donation, $5 for students, kids under 12 free.
Wakeman, OH 44889