Ortega, called the “love child of Johnny Cash and Nancy Sinatra” by American Songwriter, was featured on the hit ABC show Nashville, along with her songs Little Lie and The Day You Die. This songstress isn’t confined to one musical genre, her most recent alternative country album, Cigarettes and Truckstops blends different sounds and influences.
With Jasper as one stop on her international tour, Ortega performs in town on Feb. 18, along with Dustin Bentall and the Smokes.
F: Nashville has such a rich country atmosphere, musically, do you feel more in your element here than in Toronto?
LO: I’d say so, there’s a lot of history to absorb. It’s a country music city, I definitely feel like there’s more places for me to play and more places for me to spread my wings for things like song writing.
F: Are there opportunities that have presented themselves in Nashville that just wouldn’t have in Toronto?
LO: Getting on to the show Nashville on ABC, that’s something that came about because I was in Nashville. I also had lunch with Patsy Cline’s husband, Charlie Dick, so that wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t there.
F: You’re unabashedly candorous in your songs, was or is there ever a time you wouldn’t address a topic or subject in a song?
LO: I’m pretty straight up with the experiences that I go through. I don’t know why some songs come out, you know, and speak to certain experiences, and other ones haven’t yet. Maybe I’m still working through some stuff that I’m not ready to write about at the moment, I don’t know, but I just kind of follow my gut and my heart and what’s creatively speaking to me at the time. I’d say 90 per cent of my songwriting is experience. Every once in awhile I take liberties to tell stories, like the song Murder of Crows on my record, it’s clearly not autobiographical. That was where I was influenced by the Johnny Cash murder ballad, the song Deilia’s Gone and I got together with a co-writer friend of mine and I suggested that we try our own take. I’m a huge bird lover and I always thought it was interesting that a flock of crows is called a murder of crows; I thought that’d be an interesting title for a song so we wrote it from there, based on that.
F: There’s a little blues influence that seeps from Cigarettes and Truckstops album, can you speak to that?
LO: I was reading Hank Williams’ biography and learned that he was influenced by Rufus Payne, a blues musician. It just got me interested in the blues and its early affects on the country. I knew about the blues and I was a fan before, but after learning that I immersed myself even more into it, I started buying a lot of records, like Robert Johnson, Lead Belly, Lightnin’ Hopkins, that kind of stuff and I was just listening to it all the time and I noticed it started having an influence on my own music—my chord progressions became more bluesy and my melodies took on a bluesy feel. I’d never, ever claim in a million years that this is a blues record at all because it’s not and it’s not even a straight-up country record, but there’s definitely a little blues influence that came through just because I was listening to a lot of it.
F: Is it on purpose that Every Mile of the Ride is the final song on Cigarettes and Truckstops?
LO: I started [the album] with Cigarettes and Truckstops and thought it’d be good to bookend the album like that—the one travel song and ending with a journey song. The record has its ups and downs, it’s reflective of life itself and then the idea, if you want to look into it a little bit, that life is a journey. And my life, so far, has been a great journey, with touring, playing these shows, and getting to travel.
F: In many photos, you’re usually sporting a red accent, whether it’s your boots, lipstick or hair accessory—is there something about the colour red that speaks to you or is this just a coincidence?
LO: The red boots come from my love of Wonder Woman. I loved Wonder Woman, growing up, and thought she was so awesome. I just always felt like a little bit of a super hero thing when I put on my red boots to get on stage. You have to have a lot of energy to do the shows and I feel like when I step into my red boots, it gives me that little boost, that little kick. As for the lipstick, I think that comes from me being half Mexican. The women on my dad’s side of the family are very glamorous and the glamorous Mexican women from the 30s and 40s always had red lipstick on. And it’s nice to match your boots to your lipstick, hey, why not?
Ortega and Dustin Bentall and the Smokes play at the Legion on Monday, Feb. 18. Show begins at 8 p.m. and tickets are $20. For more information on Ortega, visit , and Dustin Bentall and the Smokes at .
