Lindsey Ell: Up Close, Too Personal
Country artist Lindsay Ell found herself caught up in an awkward Sacramento radio situation last Friday — a unique set of circumstances that were amplified by social media into a national news story that was covered by several major outlets, including the venerable Washington Post.
Ell was in Sacramento with fellow emerging artist Chase Bryant to open for Brad Paisley on Friday night. Earlier in the day, Ell and Bryant were scheduled to make stops at the three Country stations in the market — iHeartMedia’s KBEB (92.5 The Bull), CBS Radio’s KNCI and Entravision’s KNTY (101.9 The Wolf). However, shortly before 11am on Friday, Ell tweeted, “Had a scheduled performance in Sacramento today for listeners. The radio station has asked me not to come bc of my personal life. Sorry guys.”
While Ell did not specify the station, the Post reports KNCI had been promoting a live performance from Ell and Chase Bryant. By Friday morning, however, Ell’s name had disappeared from the poster. Ell’s fans understood that the “personal life” comment more than likely alluded to the fact that she’s been dating Premiere-syndicated personality Bobby Bones since last year. And yes, Bones’ show is carried on The Bull. See where this is going?
The Bull quickly took to Twitter and invited any disenfranchised KNCI fans to come over and see Ell perform there at noon. The Wolf extended a similar Twitter invite to come watch Ell perform there at 1:30pm. The Bull then declared Friday as “Lindsay Ell Day” and played her new single, “Waiting On You” once an hour. In response, Bobby Bones tweeted, “I’ve stayed out of this. Not my fight. And frankly, @lindsayell can handle herself. But this is funny.”
Late Friday, armed with a healthy dose of 20/20 hindsight, KNCI released a statement via Twitter, stating, “Lindsay is an amazingly talented, up-and-coming artist and today we regrettably made a bad decision to cancel her show. We only hope that she — and our listeners — will forgive us, and that Lindsay and her team will allow us to reschedule the show.”
• Bull PD Bryan “B-Dub” Washington later told RAMP, “92.5 The Bull believes in strong women representing our format, and we need more women on Country radio. When we saw Lindsay’s tweet, we knew the right thing to do was get behind this amazing talent and above all, a wonderful human being.” The best comment on this situation came from our friend Leslie Fram, CMT’s SVP of Music Strategy, who wisely posted, “Dear Gatekeepers — your decision to support an artist should be based solely on the artist and their music and nothing else.” [Photo by Derek Cressman]
