Review: Calgary-based Ollee Owens has 'Nowhere to Hide' with her new album coming out Oct. 25

NOWHERE TO HIDE

Ollee Owens. Ollee Owens Music.

While preparing to write a review of this fine album coming out Oct. 25, I find myself fighting the urge not to skip ahead to the last song, a powerful version of Bob Dylan’s 1983 release, “Lord Protect My Child.”

I’ve lost that battle.

You see, Calgary-based Ollee Owens isn’t just another highly talented, gritty, down-to-Earth blues-folk-rock and pop singer from western Canada who has inexplicably eluded many of us Americans.

You can hear that something extra in the texture of her voice, the sense that she is a warm, heartfelt and genuine person as she performs the 11 songs on this new album of hers. She has a lot of character.

Owens is a battle-tested singer who took 15 years off from the music business before making a successful comeback a decade ago and releasing her Cannot Be Unheard album in 2022.

Her hiatus was to raise three daughters, one of whom has special needs.

That’s something we both have in common, being parents of children with special needs.

Dylan’s song came during a time he was writing some Christian songs. But it also resonates with Owens and me because of how it expresses how his faith helped him as a parent while he was raising his son.

Here’s what Owens posted about “Lord Protect My Child” in a soulful, gospel-like video of the song she and her band have on YouTube :

“As a mother of three daughters, one of whom has special needs, thoughts of protection and security strike deep for me,” she wrote. “While you experience my version of Bob Dylan’s ‘Lord, Protect My Child’ – may your faith be renewed in greater forces to undertake for those in your care.”

She tweaked the lyrics to have them apply to the female gender, but no matter. Her version is at least as powerful if not more so than Dylan’s and that of perhaps the other most famous musician to cover that song, Susan Tedeschi.

Owens hasn’t released a perfect album, but she surely caught my attention and made me a fan.

She has a hearty voice and a command of songs that, like all good blues and folk songs, take a step back and examine the trials and tribulations of life. The album’s musicianship is solid and features Muscle Shoals guitarist Will McFarlane on eight songs. It was recorded in Nashville.

Owens co-wrote most of the songs. Besides the Dylan piece, she does a cover of a 1990 song by the famous Los Lobos writing duo, David Hidalgo-Louie Perez, “The Neighborhood.”