‘I want to evoke that around-the-campfire feeling where you lean in because someone’s about to tell you about something that happened to them,’ says Bella Frances of her lyrics
Local country artist Bella Frances has a new single, You Were Wrong About Me, coming out Aug. 8.
Since her win as Emerging Artist at the Orillia Regional Arts and Heritage Awards in 2024, Frances has dialed in on who she is, what she wants, and made her debut on the Roots North Music Festival main stage in spring, 2026.
OrilliaMatters caught up with the young country singer-songwriter, just back from a two-month visit to the west coast, to talk about life, her music, the new single, and her forthcoming EP, set to be released in March.
OrilliaMatters: You’re just back from the west coast, how did that go?
Bella Frances: It was basically me being a 20-something and exploring. Living in Ontario, I’ve often referred to myself as a landlocked mermaid. Living by the ocean for the last two months was so soothing and inspiring, and it gave me a fresh wave of enthusiasm and motivation to come back to Ontario and hit the ground running in Toronto on my career.
OM: I see you are now referring to yourself as a country artist. How did this come about, this move away from the label singer-songwriter?
BF: To be honest, I was really always a country artist. In my mind it’s not so much a switch in genre as me growing fully into the genre I always was instinctually writing in. The most important thing to me as a songwriter is the storytelling. I want people to listen to my lyrics. I want to evoke that around-the-campfire feeling where you lean in because someone’s about to tell you about something that happened to them. That’s pure country songwriting.
I think seeing Waxahatchee on the Mariposa main stage last summer was a big moment for me. I love what she does under the country genre label, how she brings the folk poetry thing I love so much into it while also making it feel raw and real.
Local country artist Bella Frances has a new single, You were Wrong About Me, coming out Aug. 8. Supplied Photo
Growing up, I think country music felt to me like a very American thing, and I think I subconsciously haven’t been giving myself full permission to express myself how I want to. But since my last release, I’ve taken a step back to really look at the overarching story I want to be telling, the way I want to be sharing my stories with the world, and I keep coming back to these values I have of my connection to the Earth.
I love every genre of music there is, and I think there’s something special about the way country music immediately creates a sense of home and grounding and reconnection the land and the heart. My music comes from my heart too; it’s a natural fit. So yeah, I’m very happy to call myself a country artist now, because it feels like I’m stepping onto a stage where I can be my whole self. It’s like going beyond where I’ve been before and coming home at the same time.
OM: For your new single and new EP, you have been working with local producer Nixon Boyd. How has that been for you?
BF: Working with Nixon has been literally just constant fun. And constantly challenging in a way that I really enjoy as an emerging artist. He’s so ridiculously talented, and so on it, and yet also somehow super humble and just a genuinely kind human.
He’s like a wizard sharing all his hard-earned industry and production wisdom with me, the recording artist protegé, but he’s also incredibly open-minded and really gets that it’s important to me in my career to be the author of my own story.
He has a mini basketball hoop in the studio, so sometimes when my brain needs a break I wander over there and shoot hoops very badly, and then I’ll feel the song click into place and we’ll lay it all down and I just think, ‘Wow. This is the best job ever. I just want to keep doing this forever.’
OM: Tell me more about the new EP.
BF: The EP is coming out in March. A huge part of the inspiration and theme for this EP is that I wanted to create a body of work that encapsulates my obsession with noticing the little details of life. A lot of my songs come out of that obsessive noticing.
Like, I have this love song — actually it’s probably better described as a small-town crush song — Letterman Jacket (which I had the time of my life performing at Roots North on the grand piano). It has a line in the chorus, “You linger with the grocery store freezer door open, go out of your way to ask me how it’s going…” That’s one of my favourite things to do when I write a song. Home in on the tiniest of details. Because to me, the little things have always felt so big.
So, I really wanted this EP to expand on that tendency in my writing to notice and celebrate the tiny things, the real-life things, because to me that’s what it looks like to celebrate being alive. Having it come out in March (right around my birthday) feels like a fun little tip of the hat to that core essence of the album.
OM: Tell us about the new single, coming out Aug. 8.
BF: You Were Wrong About Me is a song I wrote on a train back from Montreal last year. I went there because Folk Alliance International, the biggest folk conference in North America, was happening, but also because I had never actually taken a solo trip anywhere.
I really love exploring, so I went on this trip to Montreal by myself as a way of proving that I can handle myself in the big wide world. And I did! And it was great! I ended up performing with David Amram that week. And later he saw me walking by the stage he was on, playing for a ballroom full of people with a bunch of incredible instrumentalists and he goes, “Hey! We were just talking about you!” and he invites me up onstage to play one of my songs. It was insane.
OM: Are you planning on touring the album when it comes out, or any tour plans in general?
BF: I’m hoping to get tour plans into action in the near future. I love travelling and I grew up road tripping across Canada in both directions, so I feel like returning to those roots for a cross-country tour would be insanely fun. I just opened for Ellen Froese in Victoria on her west coast tour this summer, which was awesome.
I’ll also be at Burning Red Writer’s Round in Newmarket on Aug. 25. I’m stoked for that! After playing on the Roots main stage I’m hungry for more of that kind of experience. It reminds me of when I would star in musicals as a teenager because the crowd is so much louder. They get so raucous after an upbeat song. It’s so fun. Basically, the bigger the stage, the happier I am.
You can stream Bella Frances’ new single, You Were Wrong About Me, on all streaming platforms on Aug. 8. Look for her new EP in March, and follow her through her website https://www.bellafrances.com/ or on social media, https://www.instagram.com/bybellafrances/.