In the music biz, Lisa Hewitt is coined as “the complete package.”
The Canadian Country Music Award winner, living on an acreage outside of Gibbons, is blessed with killer looks, a radiant smile and a sassy, seductive voice.
But scrape away the surface patina of a hot image, and there beats the heart of an old-time country gal.
“My dad was a Ukrainian fiddle player and on Saturday nights the fiddle would come out. My mother had all these country LPs — Merle Haggard, Buck Owens and Dolly Parton — and she spread them out and played them. And when I stood in front of a mirror with a hairbrush, I was singing Dolly and Tammy (Wynette),” says Hewitt, who is popping by St. Albert’s Apex Casino on Dec. 9 and 10.
While most singers in their late 20s are pounding Nashville’s doors with contemporary rock-country tunes, Hewitt has returned to her country and western roots with The Little Ole Opry – Lisa Hewitt’s Classic Country Road Show.
It premiered with host Bev Munro at Fort Saskatchewan’s Dow Centennial Theatre on Nov. 26. The two-hour show paid tribute to the greats that laid country’s bedrock — voices such as Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Porter Wagoner and Bill Anderson, to name a few.
Along with support band The Trads, composed of Fred LaRose (bass), Gary Okrainec (steel guitar), Greg McEachern (guitar/mandolin), Al Hrabowiecky (fiddle), and former One Horse Blue drummer Rocko Vaugeois, Hewitt is ready to take the show on the road wherever there is an invitation.
The initial concept was in development for two years and required the show to look like a dead ringer for Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry.
“We found a backdrop online that looks like the Ryman Theatre. I even wear a two-piece polyester and rhinestone suit,” Hewitt says. “I wanted it to feel out there. The boys are even duded up. From their steel-toed boots to the their cowboy hats, they look slick.”
In the song line-up there are virtually no Hewitt originals with the exception of Balls, from her 2009 album Fearless, a chart that lauds women’s courage.
Most of the other Opry tunes range from Kitty Wells’ It Was God Who Made Angels to Dolly Parton’s False Eyelashes, a sad ballad about a gal in the business who follows her dream and loses everything except a pair of false eyelashes.
“I love the honesty of country and I love the strength of the female pioneers. They took a step forward and said things that were not always popular concepts,” Hewitt says.
Within the next year Hewitt aims to have a CD/DVD package of The Little Ole Opry Show recorded live off the floor into fans’ hands.
But for now, she hopes her audience, ranging from kids just discovering country to seniors shuffling down memory lane, will sit back, relax and take it all in.
“At the opening when Bev sang Green, Green Grass of Home and did a narrative in the middle, there was nothing but tears in the audience. It’s nice to know the show has brought out a lot of emotion from hootin’ and hollerin’ to cryin’,” she says.
At the Apex Casino Hewitt will be performing a mix of songs from her three previous albums and The Little Ole Opry Show. Showtime is 9 p.m. No cover.
For more information visit www.lisahewitt.com.
