All country? Ortega says that’s distorted
Singer says blues, rockabilly also had influence
Lindi Ortega gets classified as straight-up country.
Sure, she wears cowboy boots – red cowboy boots – and has a voice like Dolly Parton. But in her mind, what she does is a little bit of this – old-school outlaw country and rockabilly – and a little bit of that – roots and folk.
“I don’t know that I would classify myself as a country artist. Country isn’t what it used to be and people who play country music on the radio wouldn’t touch my stuff,” she said. “I thinks there’s definitely a classic old-school country influence that’s sort of the main thread in what I do, with a little bit of influences from blues and roots and rockabilly.”
Those influences play out on her Juno-nominated debut record “Little Red Boots,” released last year on Last Gang Records. And she’s playing songs from “Little Red Boots” in halls across the country, as the opening act for SoCal punk legends Social Distortion, fronted by Mike Ness. The tour lands at the Knitting Factory in Spokane on Tuesday.
Yes, that’s right. An outlaw country-influenced Canadian singer-songwriter is opening up for a punk rock institution, a band formed 34 years ago.
What may seem like an odd pairing on the surface actually has proven to be a good fit, Ortega said in a recent phone interview.
“Their new record is a little more rockabilly and country-influenced than their prior stuff, so the fit is not as crazy as it might appear,” she said. “It’s going really well. Their fans have been really accepting of what we’ve been doing. I wasn’t sure how it was going to work either, but it’s been really great.”
Scratch the surface and one will see a common thread between the two acts: Johnny Cash. Social Distortion’s self-titled 1990 album sports a raging cover of the Man in Black’s “Ring of Fire,” which they’ve been playing live, and Ortega ends her set each night with a cover of “Folsom Prison Blues.”
Ortega, who recently traded the winters of her native Toronto for the warmer weather of Nashville, said her follow up to “Little Red Boots” is nearly done; she’s shooting for a November release date. She said she’s taking things more Deep South.
“I was really inspired by my trip to New Orleans, so there’s a little bit more blues and Deep South influence to it, but there’s still some of the fun tongue-in-cheek country ditties that were on the last record,” she said. “It’s a little bit more ambient in its production, like there’s a lot of vibey guitars. I think it’s cool.”