“Lindi is my compass,” a woman was telling me at the bar of Gypsy Sally’s in Washington, D.C. a few minutes after her set ended. “I always come back to her when things get difficult.” Before she could tell me more, she apologized as she made her way to a deepening line of people who were lined up to meet Ortega at the venue’s merchandise table.
This is the place where Ortega meets her faithful fans who share their stories about how her songs have affected their lives. There’s “So Sad” from her first album which helped one through the loss of a family member. Or “Angel” which someone found helpful coping through their depression. Ortega has come to learn that “Demons Don’t Let Me Down” is a song people find uplifting during dark times.
“I always try and ask how they heard about the show or the music,” Lindi tells me by phone while on tour this past week across the ocean from her adopted hometown of Nashville. “It’s interesting to hear the different avenues for which they discover my music. It’s cool to hear stories about why certain songs affected different people. I enjoy doing that part of it.”
When Ortega came offstage she was still wearing her trademark veil and easily spotted by the bright red lips. “It’s a look,” says Ortega who put on red boots one day and never stopped. “Lots of musicians have looks. Some people like to wear jeans and t-shirts. I prefer to dress up. I feel it helps me to stand-out. It’s something that makes me unique. Maybe people will remember me from some of these little trademark things.”
If it seemed like it would be a transition going from being in character to meeting a group of people face to face, Ortega downplays it. “The only thing I can say is there seems to be a confidence onstage that I have that I don’t possess as when I’m on offstage. I don’t know why that is. Maybe it’s just the idea of being in front of people.”
Ortega doesn’t believe she is shy but concedes she is introverted outside of music. Onstage she offers a window into her soul. From behind the veil, Ortega peered out long enough to let us look into the vulnerability of her dark eyes. Using expressive hand gestures and arching her body in rhythm down to the syllable, Ortega reached back and filled the club with the language of longing and loss and love’s struggles.
Does she find she gets in another space? “I guess so,” she concedes somewhat, “but I’m not really sure where it comes. It’s sort of just what happens when I get up there and start singing. It’s not like I sit at home and rehearse all my moves and figure out what I’m gonna look like when I’m onstage. I just kind of feel the music. I guess I’ve seen videos and have been taken aback by things I’ve looked like onstage. I’m sort of in the moment when I’m there.”
As she strapped on her acoustic guitar before “When The Stars Align,” Ortega talked about an idealized and romanticized vision of love. If you could send a Bat symbol shining in the sky, when the right person saw it they would feel it and know it was meant for them. It would allow people to find each other.
Ortega has written about the challenges of love using words to compare it to a disease and singing that she should “hold a funeral for every love I’ve lost.” But on this night and for all her angst, Ortega seemed to come to heal. She dedicated “Dying of a Broken Heart” to everyone who had suffered its fate and came to spread the good news that we could all be resurrected. Ortega was like a priestess bringing the good news of love and said she hoped people on the barroom floor would enjoy slow dancing.
I wondered about that dichotomy between the spiritual feeling of her show and the imagery in her songs.
“I do have some dark songs,” she admits. “But I don’t want people leaving feeling depressed. I feel it’s my duty to inject a silver lining. I mostly write about what I know and I have not had a good run when it comes to matters of the heart. I say unfortunately—but in some ways fortunately—because it makes up all the songs on my records. I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse or maybe both. But yeah I try not to keep it dark all of the time.”
At one point she told the audience that she had tweeted out that she thought there was a monster inside of her. I asked her about this.
“I think we all have these skeletons in the closet or whatever demons or things that haunt us. It’s part of the human condition. I guess some folks like to pretend that part doesn’t exist and want to sweep it under the rug or whatever. It always makes me feel less alone when I realize that other people go through this same experience and is part of being human. Sometimes I tweet things like that just to show no one’s alone.”
One of Ortega’s signature songs is “Cigarettes and Truckstops.” She’d been seeing someone for a bit and then had two to three weeks apart. The song was about a longing to see him again “I did see him again but it wasn’t because I took a Greyhound,” she says with a laugh. “I just happened to run into him again.”
Ortega acknowledges that there is a common thread of country music running in all of her records but says that she’s never claimed to be a purist. “I listen to and am influenced by all kinds of music,” she says. “If there is one thing I could say is that I like music that was recorded in certain eras when they would record live off the floor with two microphones and a live raw sound. One day I’d like to record a live record.”
Ortega’s band puts you in the setting of old roadhouses and bars, led by guitarist James “Champagne” Robinson’s whose playing evokes images of a mystical Western landscape. Her Mom planted the seed by playing Willie and Waylon at home and tuning into the Dolly Parton Variety Show. These days, the grown-up Ortega is compared to Parton, Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline, something she finds flattering but creates a lot of expectations to live up to.
Ortega’s mother had a crush on Kris Kristofferson and these days, her daughter covers “Me and Bobby McGee” onstage, the song made famous by Janis Joplin. It’s one of the many covers that Ortega has taken on from greats like Solomon Burke, Sam Cooke, Johnny Cash and the Bee Gees. “To Love Somebody” from last year’s Faded Gloryville was recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The cover owes as much to the Brothers Gibb as the suggestive power of Janis Joplin’s version.
After seeing the movie “Crazy Heart” about a broken down country singer, Ortega thought about her own life and career. “I watched that movie and it made me question my future as an artist,” she reflected. “How long could I keep doing that and would I end up like he is at the beginning of the movie. There’s this ambiguity with the future in music because you don’t know. Nothing’s guaranteed. The trends may change or people may not dig what you do. You just hope what you write will have a lasting effect and people will want to hear it. But there’s no guarantee.”
Ortega characterizes today’s music business as being challenging in so many ways. It doesn’t offer the luxury of taking six months to get inspired and work on new material. Ortega says directly that she has to constantly tour in order to pay her rent and live. “The time isn’t there to dedicate something for months at a time.”
She moved to Nashville some years ago when she found she was spinning her wheels in Toronto and decided it was time for a change. The sense of history of some of her musical heroes pervades the city where Ortega is taken by its Spring and the burgeoning food scene as many chefs open gourmet restaurants. When Ortega played at the Ryman, she describes the experience as surreal. “I felt like I was in a dream,” she remembered. “I don’t think I’ve been more nervous for anything in my life.”
Ortega doesn’t come back to the States until mid-February when she begins a string of U.S. and Canadian dates. She’s managed to write a few new songs but when asked what’s next she has three words: “Touring, touring touring.”
“It never stops. Endless paved roads.”
Originally posted here.
