Ollee Owens puts herself out there on her powerful and personal new album Nowhere Left To Hide — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
After returning to music a decade ago and releasing 2022’s Cannot Be Unheard, the Calgary blues-rock powerhouse is better than ever on her latest down-to-earth studio album. It’s teeming with stylish, sophisticated jewels mined from blues, rock and soul. Nowhere To Hide features eight co-writing credits by Owens and a few covers, including Bob Dylan’s Lord Protect My Child. From the driving title track to the infectious Some Days and the well-crafted Shivers and Butterflies, Owens is a dynamo on the 11-track album.
Recorded at Nashville’s Sweetbriar Studio and Gnome Studios, Nowhere To Hide shines with help from a who’s who of acclaimed Nashville session musicians that producer Bobby Blazier brought to the sessions. “Bobby has an incredible ability to bring people together,” Owens says. “We all got in the studio together, gave it everything we got, and made some great music. I learned so much, especially vocally, as there was real opportunity to dig deeper and embody the lyrics.”
Case in point: The single Some Days, she says, “came out of a desire to acknowledge the ups and downs of our day-to-day experiences and at the same time call out the resilience of the human spirit no matter what we come up against. Sonically, we imagined it as a blues-infused song that leaves the listener feeling happy. It was recorded in Nashville with some of the best session musicians in Music City: Chris Rodriguez, Craig Young, Bobby Blazier and DeMarco Johnson. The energy in the room that day was palpable as the song began to take shape, capturing exactly what I heard in my head when we wrote the song, resulting in a soulful and hope-filled anthem.”
Owens’ backstory began in the farming community of New Bothwell, Manitoba. As a teen, she gravitated toward Dylan, Delta blues, The Staple Singers and Etta James. “When I came back to creating music, I really realized the depth and influence that particular style of music had on me,” Owens says.
She and her husband started their family early and had three daughters, one of whom has a cognitive disability. After some soul-searching, and realizing her daughter had exceptional needs, she took a hiatus from music. “I focused on being present and engaged for my daughters,” she says. Fittingly, her take on Lord Protect My Child strikes an emotional chord as Owens pours her soul into this Dylan deep cut from the Infidels era. “That song has really become close to my heart,” she says. “My daughter is 23 now, but there’s still a lot of vulnerability there. The desire for protecting and taking care of her will never go away.”
Listen to Nowhere To Hide below, watch the video for Some Days above, and tune into Ollee Owens on her website, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
