How Lindi Ortega picked herself off the mat after a major-label K.O
Faded Gloryville, the fourth album from Toronto-bred, Nashville-based Lindi Ortega, cements her reputation as country’s crystalline-voiced goth-rock version of Dolly Parton. It’s full of forlorn, windswept ballads like “Ashes,” “Tell It Like It Is,” roadhouse-ribald stompers “I Ain’t The Girl” and “Run-Down Neighborhood,” and three soulful stunners produced in Muscle Shoals by ex-Civil Wars anchor John Paul White and Alabama Shakes’ Ben Tanner (“Someday Soon,” “When You Ain’t Home” and a finger-popping take on the Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody”). But, as great as it is, it’s a recording that nearly didn’t happen.
Although Ortega’s last e ffort, 2013’s Tin Star, had landed her three Canadian Country Music Association Award nominations in 2014, where she won for roots artist of the year, the music business was taking its toll on her, sapping her strength, clouding the clarity of her aesthetic vision. Her career expectations had been hopelessly naïve, she was discovering. She’d come to the U.S. on such a promising note, with 2008’s rustic The Drifter EP for Cherrytree/Interscope. “Which was a bit daunting in and of itself,” she says. “You have a major-label deal, then that all goes south, and you’ve got to start all over again, pick yourself up, and figure out how you’re going to continue. That’s just the way it is, and I started to realize that.”
Gradually, the singer began asking herself existential questions, until she screeched to a jarring halt at what would become her career crossroads. She tried to remain optimistic. “But it’s hard to make a living, and sometimes you don’t know how you’re going to pay your rent,” says the 35-year-old Ortega. “And when you’ve got things that are almost about to happen—or could happen—and then you lose those opportunities, you wonder if you’re really meant to do this, or if the universe is against you. You start to doubt yourself, what you’re doing, and how you’re doing it. So, I wasn’t sure if I should keep going. I felt like, ‘Oh, I’m getting older. I don’t know if anyone’s going to care anymore.’”
Unfortunately, the artist was studying the film Crazy Heart—and Jeff Bridges’ sad-sack, singer-in-decline character Bad Blake—for clues. “That movie struck something in me, as it probably would any struggling musician,” says Ortega, who began to worry that she, too, might wind up playing bowling alleys in her alcohol-fogged 50’s. She even toyed with a Plan B: going back to college to get a degree in her favorite field, meteorology, so she could become a licensed storm chaser. No joke, she swears: “I’m a total weather geek.”
What got Ortega out of her funk? The Muscle Shoals sessions helped. But mainly, she came to terms with reality. “The music industry is hard, and it hits you like a ton of bricks,” she says. “And sometimes, when you get with it, you can let it bury you, and that’s it. Or you can crawl out of the bricks and figure out what you can build. And that’s exactly what I did.”
—Tom Lanham
