Ollee Owens is having a year. The Calgary-based blues and Americana artist has taken home the inaugural Canadian Blues Music Award for Emerging Blues Artist or Group of the Year – recognising her album Nowhere to Hide and cementing her place as one of the most vital new voices in Canadian blues. With over 2.5 million social media views in 2025, a Roots Music Report chart run that placed her album in the Canadian Top 10 for over 35 weeks including five at #1, and now a national award to her name, Owens is no longer an artist to watch. She has arrived.
And she is already looking ahead. Owens has announced that she will be recording her next album in Nashville with producer Colin Linden – a pairing that signals serious artistic ambition. Linden is one of the most decorated figures in Canadian and American roots music: a Grammy winner for producing Keb’ Mo’s Oklahoma, the recipient of nine Juno Awards from 25 nominations, a Maple Blues lifetime achievement award winner, and the musician whose guitar runs through the soundtracks of the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Inside Llewyn Davis. He has produced and played alongside Bruce Cockburn, Bob Dylan, Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris, John Prine, and Gregg Allman, and served as musical director for the ABC series Nashville.
For Owens to enter the studio with Linden is to step into a lineage of blues and roots recording that runs deep – and the match of his soulful, genre-rooted instincts with her commanding voice and unflinching songwriting is one of the most exciting prospects in Canadian blues right now.
Owens’ journey from a small farming community in Manitoba to award-winning artist is extraordinary. Inspired by blues legends and gospel greats, she began writing songs at eight and picked up the guitar at twelve – before stepping back from music to raise her three daughters. The music never left her, and in 2022 she returned with Cannot Be Unheard, proving her voice was built to be felt. Since then, she has shared festival stages with Dawn Tyler Watson and Matt Andersen and performed at B.B. King’s Blues Club in Memphis. Nowhere to Hide, produced at Nashville’s Sweetbriar Studio with Bobby Blazier and an all-star lineup including guitarist Will McFarlane, bassist Tommy Sims, and keyboardist De Marco Johnson, earned praise from Blues Matters, Blues Music Magazine, and Americana Highways, which called it one of the strongest surprises of 2024.
The video for the title track – shot in a cavernous warehouse with a massive projection screen juxtaposing historic and contemporary struggles – made an immediate impact, and her previous video ‘Shivers and Butterflies’ amassed nearly 800,000 views in a single month. Draped in bold red to symbolise courage, Owens delivers a searing performance with the urgency of a woman who has walked through fire and come out stronger. “I wanted to create a visual bridge between history and the challenges we face now,” she explains. “The troubles we sense, see, and experience may change shape, but the fight remains.”
Owens brings her celebrated live show back to western Canadian stages this spring and summer. A vocal powerhouse whose passion for authentic connection is unmistakable in person, she will appear at Hard Knox Brewery in Diamond Valley on April 18, Kinfest in Millarville, AB on June 20, Summer in the Park in Lacombe on June 24, the Camrose Blues Festival on July 17, the Venue Summer Concert Series in High River on August 2 and Nanaimo Blues Festival on August 8.
The blues has always been about finding strength in the struggle. With a national award, a legendary producer, and a summer of stages ahead, Ollee Owens is making it clear she is just getting started.
Tour Dates:
June 20 at 7:45 PM – Kinfest – Millarville, AB
June 24, 2026 at 6:00 PM – Summer in the Park – Lacombe, AB
July 17, 2026 at 6:00 PM – Camrose Blues Festival – Camrose, AB
July 30, 2026 at 6:00 PM – Private Event – Calgary, AB
August 2, 2026 at 1:00 PM – The Venue Summer Concert Series – High River, AB
August 8 at 3:00 PM – Nanaimo Blues Festival – Nanaimo, BC