Lindsay Ell

Defined by her virtuosic guitar playing as well as her ability to write songs melding bluegrass, blues, and rock, Lindsay Ell is one of country music’s most dynamic 21st-century stars. Born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1989, Ell picked up guitar at age eight, studying the playing of Jimi Hendrix, Derek Trucks, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and she became a protégée of fellow Canadian Randy Bachman as a teen. The Guess Who founder produced and released her 2008 debut, Consider This, on his label. Shortly after her second album, Alone, came out in 2009, Ell moved to Nashville, and her 2013 single “Trippin’ On Us” represented her full-time shift into country music. Ell debuted at the Grand Ole Opry in 2014 and put out a series of singles, including the upbeat “By the Way” and the defiant “Shut Me Up,” in the run-up to her 2017 album The Project. In 2018, she released The Continuum Project, a track-by-track cover of John Mayer’s Continuum album that she’d recorded while figuring out how she wanted The Project to sound. Heart Theory, an ambitious examination of grief’s seven stages that included cowrites with Brandy Clark and Kane Brown, came out in 2020, serving as further proof of Ell’s arrival as an artist.