Bre & Ell Sing from the Power of “I Don’t Know” (IDK)… but Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn
- 15 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Lindsay Ell brought the Fence Sitter Tour to Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn last week. Her killer electric guitar skills weren’t the only thing completely electric about the show. Electricity like that don’t need a match just go to a Lindsay Ell show and you will watch it catch like wildfire.
In her VIP you had people like me who’ve been blown away and aboard the Ell-train since day 1. But then you had new fans that found their way to her discovery - some stories way more eccentric than you would think, but the end result was of course new Ell diehards. One attendee discovered her through knowing the opener, Bre Kennedy, and questioned what rock he was living under for not knowing who she was before doing a deep dive a week before the show. Another had an even crazier story who was catfished by a Lindsay impersonator! (PSA to ALL: Lindsay will NEVER ask you for money and any donations or links to her Make You Foundation will always be through her official foundation website. Stay vigilant!).
Full disclosure, after hearing Bre Kennedy’s set and then doing my own deep dive of her two albums (her first Scream Over Everything and her newest The Alchemist) I questioned how I didn’t know of her work before she hit the stage. She has been on the road with the band Need to Breath and I had an ‘aha moment’ - the band that has a few country features - Old Dominion, Carly Pearce, and Carrie Underwood to name a few.
Lindsay once said that one of the highest compliments she received from a fan after a show was that it was like going to church. I hope she is just as flattered to hear me say it is also like an intimate therapy session with a lot more bass and drums. Bre was a great opening addition to the party. Bre even inspired me to buy the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho which she said inspired much of her newest album, including the title - The Alchemist.
Life is a string of unknowns.Your story is completely unwritten and only you hold the pen. When there are road blocks along the way sometimes it is hard to love yourself through it. You might fall from grace, sit on the fence too long paralyzed by indecision, and sometimes your decisions might lead to some broken pieces before finally knowing what you want. Acknowledge the struggle of the journey, acknowledge the pain you are tolerating. Just because you might have to do it the hard way doesn’t mean you will always be holding your breath swimming upstream. And in that right there is the magic.
In The Alchemist Bre sings “my broken pieces are my tapestry every stitch holds together my story”. Sometimes we have to break to put ourselves back together again. But without learning from those pieces we cannot grow into what we are meant to become.
Sometimes the story we tell ourselves is distorted by society - societal expectations, timelines society dictates for having a career or becoming a mother. By trying to fit into the vase society wants to put us in, our garden cannot grow wild and free. But the truth is you are never late to your own party - it’s your life and you’re right on time.
In the song The Vase Bre realizes she was perfect all along, wild and free, before trying to fit in… “put me back in the wild/where I was perfect all along/can I get back what I wished away/when I gave the garden for the vase”.
Ell echoes this sentiment of not knowing what her future holds often in her music. She analyzes the questions she has about what she wants, analyzes how she is going to get there, questions her timeline versus society’s expectations, and if she can love herself fully through the unknown.
Her conclusion? She’s taking back the power in sitting in the ‘I don’t know”. We don’t know what we truly want and what makes us fulfilled without sitting on the fence at one point or another with some deep introspection. Your story won’t necessarily look like everybody else’s, but you can still be grateful for what you got and for all the imperfect pieces that hold your story together. You don’t have to give up the wild garden to put yourself in anyone else’s vase.
Everybody might be looking for heaven in this life, but everyone’s heaven looks different and becoming that version of yourself is an ever evolving journey. Bre says it beautifully in her song Looking For - “I’ve been trying to find/ Heaven, it’s just a state of mind/It was me I was looking for”. Along the way of becoming ‘you’ you’re discovering your purpose, chasing your dreams, starting a family, advancing your career, whatever you decide on becoming. We are the music makers, we are the dreamers, you are your own alchemist. There will be darkness, but through the darkness there will be light. As Bre realizes in her song Becoming “heavy days lead to something, I find myself loving/what I’m becoming”. Even though you cannot control how you get there love yourself and love your story. If you focus too much on the destination you will just get tired of running.
Ell wouldn’t change anything for the life she is living or even the hard way she had to get to this point. She is chasing her dreams and creating her own happiness. In that process (like everybody else) she still sits on the fence of hard life decisions, the tale as old as time for women, can we have it all? When the music stops will she regret not becoming a mother?
There’s power in saying “I don’t know” and there is a privilege in sitting at a crossroads of your life. Without darkness we can’t appreciate the light. Without the lows the highs wouldn’t taste as sweet. Without the pressure of the unknown there wouldn't be the relief we feel when we find the answer. There’s even good in grief, a blessing in the burden. It is all in your perspective. Bre sings about this dichotomy in Good Grief “For just a second everything feels like its gonna be/a little less bitter a little more sweet like it outta be/the proof is in the hurting/when I’m trying to find the rest in the mess, a little relief”.
What your looking for is actually within. The grief is good and the unknown is powerful. Life is the story of becoming. You are the alchemist of your own story and there is always magic in that.
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