Local singer-songwriter releases first three singles ahead of her album's launch in January

It all started – like many a country song – in a bar. Lindsay Jordan was working in a bluegrass bar in Ohio one night in 2019 when (perhaps fueled by some liquid courage) she got up and started singing some Dolly Parton. 

A year later she was living in Anaconda, having traded in the bar for the barista, but behind the scenes a musical career was emerging. Now, four years later the singer-songwriter is on the cusp of releasing her first full-length album, with the first three tracks out today across all streaming platforms ahead of a nationwide tour coming up in 2024. 

Despite having little in the way of formal training or experience in music, what she does have are her voice, her life experience (as her lyrics can well attest), and not a small amount of luck. In that bar that night was a promoter for a Townes Van Zandt tribute show, as well as a group that had the makings of a country band, both of whom asked her to be part of it. And she went for it. 

"I took it very seriously. I wanted to do shows – I wanted to just do it, so I just dove in head first," said Jordan over a glass of hard seltzer at the Smelter City Brewery on Monday. "I didn't want to do covers, so I started writing music. All these other guys are writing music and I thought it can't be that hard." The songs came quickly – maybe a bit too quickly as her first attempts "were leaning into pop country probably too hard." 

Though she wanted music that was fun, she also wanted it to be real, so she turned to her own life as inspiration.

"This group of songs is very much me," she said. "With these songs I wrote where I'm at – I don't want to feel pressured to fit into a mold. I want people to have fun, and I want people to relate to it."

Her first track, "Because of Texas," has a snappy dance rhythm that's sure to have the clubs (her favorite kind of venue) hopping. The fast pace to it fits with her source material.

"I went to go visit somebody that I wasn't seeing yet at the time. This trip is gonna make it or break it," she said. Well it didn't make it, but maybe it's really all about the journey.

The next tune, "Daddy Issues," starts to just the opposite effect as one might expect from such a baggage-laden title, and yet in keeping with her upbeat nature, after the slow first verse it picks right up and gets movin' – and movin' on. 

"Daddy issues is such a normal term. People say it all the time. But I wanted to do a play on that with newspaper and magazine subscriptions," she explained, with a nod to monthly child support checks in the mail. "When I was writing about that, I wanted it to be a fun song. ... My gosh, a lot of people have that, but it's something people should be able to dance off. You're not that, you're not your past." 

The third and final track of the group (there'll be 10 all together when her self-titled LP drops in January), "First Time Lover," is over almost as quickly as it started, but there's meaning beneath that colorful metaphor. 

"It's the things you're thinking about when you start seeing somebody. The things you worry about out of the gate. The things you put stock into and have expectations for," she said. 

It's those things, those truths – her truths, she says, and yes that's true, but perhaps there's universality in that truth when dealing with themes like love – that were crucially important to her throughout the entire process. In that she was fortunate once again by working with friend and co-writer, Sean Marshall, as right from the start they weren't going to sacrifice truth for something else. 

"If it was gonna be that, I wouldn't do it," she said. "If you're putting yourself out there, that's what you gotta do. I'm very lucky to have had that experience."

And an experience it's been, dating back to the early days of the pandemic when these songs were first being written and only now seeing it come to fruition. And that's okay.

"We're doing this for us and we hope that people will listen to it. That's how we've taken to the project – which is nice, because the pressure isn't there," she said. "These songs, they've been done so long it almost feels like we've been keeping our secret and are now releasing it to the world. I'm really excited about it."