Hannah Ellis concert a family affair
Country music singer-songwriter Hannah Ellis is spending the days leading up to her first wedding anniversary on tour.
Ellis married country singer Nick Wayne in 2021. Fortunately, she’ll have her husband playing in the band with her when she appears at 9 p.m. May 20 at the Hard Rock Casino Northern Indiana in Gary.
“We have a blast working together,” she said. “We write a lot together and perform a lot together as well. So even though we have separate artist careers we try to work together as much as possible. When it works out for him to go with me, he will. And we joke that it also seems to conveniently work out when I’m going really fun places.”
The show at the Hard Rock Casino will be on the Hard Rock Café stage.
“I think it’s a pretty long show, so I’m really excited because
I’m going to be trying some new songs and even some new cover songs,” she said. “This resurgence of ’90s country means I can include some of my childhood favorites into my set list these days, which I’m really excited about.”
Ellis has a new single out called “Us” and she’s excited to perform it for audiences.
She will also debut some new material and dust off some fun covers, she said.
“I did a cover of ‘You’re Still the One’ by Shania Twain on TikTok and it went viral, so I’ve been including that in my sets,” she said.
She and Wayne will also duet on a few songs, she said.
Ellis attended the University of Kentucky on a full academic scholarship, graduating in 2012 with a degree in Integrated Strategic Communications. A music lover her entire life, she decided to give music a shot.
“I was really working as a songwriter before I got my record deal,” she said. “I was always an artist; I was a singer growing up. But as far as Nashville, I got a job as a songwriter first.”
She moved to Nashville right after graduating from college with the hopes of chasing her dreams.
In 2015, she auditioned for “The Voice” on NBC. It didn’t go the way she’d hoped at the time and she wasn’t picked for a team.
“I think we all want success in those moments. But it was really such a God thing,” she said. “I was out there a whole month filming. About a week before my actual audition, I got an email from a publisher in Nashville (saying) … we’d like to talk to you about a publishing deal.”
If she had been picked for a team, she wouldn’t have been able to sign any other deals for six months.
“Actually, not making it onto a team ended up benefiting me because I was able to come home and immediately start having these conversations with these publishers,” she said. “It worked out perfectly.”
She gained national attention for “Officer Down,” her 2016 tribute to her slain cousin. In 2017, her song “You Were Never Gone” was on the MTV series, “Teen Wolf.”
“It was a big moment of buildup between two of the main characters. This moment happens during this big kiss scene,” she said. “The song did really well because the moment itself was teed up to be great so it really resonated.”
In 2018, she was named to Rolling Stone’s “Artists to Watch” list and toured as part of CMT’s “Next Women of Country.”
She made her Grand Ole Opry debut in September 2021 and has toured with Gavin DeGraw, Dwight Yoakam and Devin Dawson and Carly Pearce.
“I was with Carly in March and April and that was incredible,” she said. “It was such a blast. This summer is a lot of fairs and festivals.”