Shania Twain’s lead guitarist has dished what it’s really like to work and travel the world with the Queen of Country Pop.
A singer-songwriter in her own right, Lindsay Ell, 35, says getting to perform with the Man! I Feel Like A Woman! hit-maker is “wild”.
Speaking to the Standard backstage at BST Hyde Park ahead of Twain’s headlining performance, she said: “Playing with Shania has been like a full circle pinch me moment. I mean, I started singing because of Shania. I think the first song I fell in love with Shania was Nobody Needs To Know, one of her very first singles and now, I play that song on stage with her. I’m like three feet away from her on stage and I’m like ‘this is a wild moment, this is so crazy!’”
They say never meet your heroes but Ell is happy to report that Twain doesn’t disappoint.
“She is so lovely and so wonderful,” the purple-haired musician gushed. “It has just been so lovely getting to see how Shania works and really see how she empowers everybody in her crew and her band and she lifts us all up and challenges us to be better and so it has been such a beautiful experience.
“You get to see how passionate she is and why she is the icon she is because she works so hard, every single day of her life. Like, decades into her career, she is still that passionate about every aspect of her show from wardrobe to the setlist to how the band is configured to the blend of our harmonies and so it’s really inspiring as an artist to watch that.”
Last month the Canadian-American star was right there when Twain played the legends slot on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury festival.
“Playing Glastonbury was like an out of body experience,” she enthused. “I have played for some big crowds before but there is an energy at Glasto that is just hard to find anywhere else. It was so amazing to feel that energy and be a part of it. The fact that Shania played the legends slot was just so cool and 140,000 people watched our show which was so wild and as far as you could see there were just people singing at the top of their lungs. How do you top that? I don’t really know!
“Backstage was such a fun vibe, we got to hang out with Paloma Faith and her crew. She is so, so incredible, such a good singer and all of her dancers were amazing. Janelle Monáe was on after us and she totally kicked a**. The level of girl power on the line-up that day was like ‘whoa, this is unbelievable’.”
Twain along with another of the female artists faced a backlash over sound issues at the festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset.
Weighing in on the controversy, Ell said: “The thing is with big festivals like that there is always going to be some sort of sound issue just because there are so many bands going on and off that stage so quickly so to think that every big camp can get their gear on and off stage without one little change of the normal set up its just a sort of part of things. So as much as everyone’s been talking about sound issues it wasn’t as bad as they’ve all chalked it up to be and pros like Shania know what to do. The show must go on, you carry through.”
As for herself, it has been four years since the release of Ell’s fifth studio album Heart Theory. While she released single Sweet Spot last year, fans have been crying out for more.
She played her own headline show at London’s Omeara on July 8 where she treated those lucky to be in attendance to a first listen of some of the new music she has been toiling away on.
Teasing what’s to come, she said: “I’ve been a busy little bee writing and I’m getting ready to release the first set of songs. I haven’t released music in a while so I’m so excited about that.
“I will come back to the UK as much as they will physically have me.”
It was also recently announced that she is set to receive the Canadian Country Music Association’s 2024 Gary Slaight Music Humanitarian Award for her achievements with The Make You Movement fund, a charitable fund that she founded in 2020 which is dedicated to raising money for organisations providing support for disenfranchised youth, specifically focusing on survivors of sexual trauma and domestic abuse.
The nod, which she says “means the world” to her, is additionally in recognition for her advocacy work and support for sexual assault survivors and the LGBTQ2SIA+ community.
