Canadian singer/ songwriter Alee sat down with me Saturday to talk about her mainstage debut, her new music and her creative process. We also got to chat about life lessons and how perspectives can change as you grow older and grow wiser. 

 

Your set was beautiful, your outfit looked great, and the weather held out. I’d say that was a success.

Thank you, thank you. Yes, but It's getting chilly now. I want to go buy some merch. I would like a crew neck, please.

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So now that you've performed, who are you looking forward to seeing the rest of the evening or weekend?

I have been a big Jason Aldean fan since day 1. So I am super excited when the girls were like, ‘Jason's also playing this weekend.’ I was like, okay, we're staying around so that we can stay for Sunday, and we can go in and see Jason Aldean.

I'm also a big Alana Springsteen fan, being in Nashville, we work with a bunch of the same people. So Alana is amazing, and I'm so excited to see her set.

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So you've been to Boots before?

Yes. I played Boots back in 2017 for the first time. So it's been a minute. It's been through

several seasons and COVID and Yeah.

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How did it feel coming back and getting to perform again?

Honestly, they reached out Super last minute. They were like, we have one spot left, and we'd love for you to have it. And I was like, I will absolutely come back and play Boots and Hearts. You don't have to ask me twice. I'm sure as you've already noticed from being here for your first time, it is just the best group of people, the best kind of fans. Everything is just so wonderful here, and it's just amazing.

 

What's coming up for you? What's going on in the next couple of months to the end of

the year?

It's crazy because Love Again, the album, has been out since April, which is wild to think it's

already been that long. But also, in that short, there are many emotions built with that.

But, I've already been working on a lot of songs, been writing a ton still, and I have a lot of

songs that I wanna cut. So I think we're going into the studio next month just to start the whole process again, which is crazy because we have literally just finished an album. But I'm like, let's give the people what they want. They want more music. I have music I'd like to share with them.

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What does the creative process kind of look like normally for you?

I mean, living in Nashville, I am a Monday-to-Friday songwriter, whether that's for myself or for other artists. And then outside of that, honestly, my Saturdays and Sundays are still spent working on music too. So I am a full-time musician and blessed to be doing that, it's just really cool. It's been an interesting change too lately where I'm kind of at the point in my life entering my thirties where I'm like, you know what? I think I figured out a lot about life, and now it's just about living it and enjoying it rather than stressing about it. I think that's also changed a lot of my songwriting too. And that's why I think I'm so adamant that we get this new music out because I think there's just a different confidence and energy in what I've been making musically. Ladies, especially the ladies who are getting into their thirties, could just use a reminder to stop stressing. I wish I had known through all of my mid to late twenties that I just needed to stop stressing so much.

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It always feels like a race. Right? Then you kinda reach a point where you're like, what

am I running for?

Correct. You're like, wait. Yeah. Now hold on a second. I could have been doing this differently the entire time, but I chose to make it hard on myself.

 

You live in Nashville right now, right? How are you liking it?

Full time in Nashville, which is wild because I was born and raised in Edmonton. It is a huge

change, to be as far as I am away from family. But Nashville has just been the greatest blessing and a curse some days. But for the most part, it was a blessing for me. I’m just loving making music and now that we've got a full album, I feel like there's gonna have to be a tour of some sort, but I feel like I keep saying that. And I feel like every time I say that, I'm just jinxing it. So I'm gonna just stop saying it, and then at some point, you're gonna see an announcement that reads ‘Alee coming out on tour.’

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Do you find there's a big difference between being in Nashville from being brought up

here in Canada? The difference between Canadian country music to US country music?

I think that the rift is closing, between Canadian and American country. It’s changed in the last couple of years too because a lot more Canadian artists are now cutting American printed songs and things like that. So the lines between Canadian and American are blending and are not as far apart anymore. I also think as more Americans discover the great music that Canada has to offer, there's less and less of a divide, which is wonderful.

It's fun to be a Canadian because people are like, oh my god. Are you Canadian? That's such a fantastic thing and I'm like, yay, that’s so awesome. It's been incredible. It's been a fun time to be in Nashville as a Canadian, as someone in country music, and as someone in country-pop music too. There have been a ton of pop artists that have been coming into the country world, and it’s becoming a lot more popular. Absolutely, it’s like everyone realized that country fans are just the best, and they're like ‘We would like some of that’. Which is crazy because we've been trying to tell you that for the last however many years country music has been around. 

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When you're writing, how do you decide what songs are for you and what songs are best

for somebody else?

I honestly go by the vibe in the room every single day. On my phone, I will make a list of notes of ideas for song titles, song concepts, songs whatever, and then sometimes, I have a voice memo. I'm also very melodically present in a room, so I'll have a bunch of cool melodies and lyric hooks and all of that. I was a puzzle girl growing up, so I just love being thrown into a room and expected to work it out. I think that's why I love songwriting, especially the way that Nashville does it. It really does depend on the day.

It's like every single day is a different way of building the corners and the outside edge. Then

you just get to fill in the middle parts with beautiful colours and different things, and every single day changes. Some days, it's a harder puzzle than others. It's just the beauty of rolling with the punches and just kinda following your heart and telling your own story. Sometimes through someone else's story, sometimes through your own.

I like to say it's the free therapy that I deserve as an artist.

It's always nice to chat with artists and see how their minds work and how they sort

through things like this. I think we’ve all heard a song and been floored, wondering how

they came up with it. 

It just depends on the day. Some days, for instance, I wrote 3 songs last week, and one song was me walking in with a fully finished chorus. Another day we walked into the room, and someone said something and I was like, oh, that's the title. Let's write that. Then the other one was a girl coming in with a title already formed and we decided how we were gonna tell the story. It's cool that literally every single day is something different.

 

It's beautiful that you get to do the same thing, but it's so dramatically different that it

doesn't feel monotonous. I think if it feels like you lost your heart for it, the audience can

tell. Right? When you perform, part of that is enjoying the audience and the audience

enjoying the show.

Yeah! It's so weird because I haven't even done a show, especially a full band... I haven't done

a full band show in a very long time. It feels so crazy but I love learning the album again!

The Boots experience was such a fun experience for me because you make an album for it to be heard through someone's headphones and then to take it to a whole new level for a live show is just something totally different. I was saying to the guys yesterday, it's called Boots and Hearts, I'm gonna wear my boots, and it's going to hit straight to my heart. I'm so excited to go home and cry tonight thinking, that was such a beautiful experience. It was just so great because I think asmuchasthefans,andI'vebeena fan of many of the artists that I love, so I get it. But the fans are there because they love the artists, but they don't understand that the artists are there because they literally love the fans. There would be nothing

without the fans. So it's so cool to be in a position where people show up first thing in the afternoon ready to risk whatever rainstorm is coming through and just sing along to songs that were just released weeks prior. So it's so fun.

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I'd love for you to tell me a little bit about your album.

‘Love Again’ was the last song written for the album. It basically started when I met a new

producer who I clicked very well with and we started working on this album together, and he was like, Alee, you're in a happy relationship. You are a very happy, positive person, and you love writing sad songs. And I was like, yeah. I love to cry. He was like, we need to share your personality with people, and you need to write songs that are gonna do that. It can't just be sad girl songs all the time. So that was a wonderful challenge, that kind of blessed me because it separated me from what I'm typically used to and forced me down a different trail. When we came up with this project, it felt kinda like it was lopsided because it went from super happy love songs to some sad girl crier moments. I was like, okay, it

needs a title track that blends all of this. Believe me, there were so many titles that had the word love in it. I was like, what if we just wrote the title track and it's just called love again? It was just supposed to be a joke but then I thought about it and I was like Wait...hold on a second. At this point, I was still in a very happy relationship, I also have to add. But there's beauty in falling out of love. Where now, you get to experience all those first again

and I think we always forget that. It's so funny because literally 3 weeks before the album came out, my ex and I broke up and I was like, oh, great, I get to experience this album the same way everyone else is. Then I was like, I hate this concept. Why did we do this concept? This is the worst idea, she laughs. In the end, it was so healing. I think that was the moment where I sort of thought, you have to trust your heart. My heart wrote that song knowing what I was going through at the time and even though I was not fully getting it through my head maybe there were better things ahead. I think it’s cool being the artist who's also experiencing all the things. It is truly so genuine this album, top to bottom. Now when I listen back to it, I say to myself, this is me talking to myself throughout this entire 6 year relationship. Saying things like, hey, maybe there are better things. That goes for both me and my ex in the situation. It’s cool to now be able to share that with girls moving forward who are creating TikToks with the audio and talking about their heartbreaks, and it's just wild. It's such a blessing for me to be able to do for others what music has done for me.

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I'll ask you one last question. What would you say is a song that's on repeat on your

playlist right now?

That's a very good question. I have started listening to all of my old classic favourites again. So Renter Road, Brooks and Dunn, has been on repeat nonstop the last week. That's my pump-up. Between that and Nickelback, we went between both of them this week.

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Check out Alee’s album Love Again, out now.