Keeley Russell album artwork for latest single "Losing Game". (Supplied)

By Alessia Proietti

New single: "Losing Game"

COVID unit nurse hopes to bridge divided communities through music

Feb 10, 2022 | 2:58 PM

Keeley Russell has seen it all; moving across the country, moving through the pandemic as a COVID unit nurse, and now she’s moving on to the music scene.

“I just want music, period, to bring us together,” said Russell, a former Red Deer resident of 10 years. “You’ve had the worst day ever, you go home and you throw on some music. You get into the song, you’re dancing in the kitchen, cooking supper; it’s a universal language.”

Originally from Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Russell always had a passion for music. Starting off in her church choir, she later begged her parents for piano lessons and explored her musical interests with clarinet in high school, standing string bass, and self-taught guitar. Fast forward to 2022, she released her first single “Losing Game” produced alongside Canadian Industry Person of the Year Grant Howarth of Audiohouse in Calgary.

Getting to this point, however, is quite the story.

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Moving to Terrance, British-Columbia to be with a boyfriend in 2008, she worked as a medical office assistant in a hospital. Once the relationship ended in 2010, she moved to Red Deer with her two brothers, Zach and Brody, and sister Jory.

“At first, because I come from a super small town in Nova Scotia, it was incredibly overwhelming, believe it or not. When I moved there I thought it was massive and ‘I don’t know how I can live in the city’,” she said.

With no place to stay, a newly acquainted motor biking friend of her brother’s offered to share her basement suite.

For six months, Russell and her sister shared a bedroom while the brothers bunked in an oversized closet. Russell worked as a waitress at East Side Mario’s until finding a job in her field at the now-closed Medicross clinic.

It was during her nursing program at Red Deer College in 2014, where Russell started to settle into the big city, playing on the school’s soccer team with her sister.

“We know a lot of people in Red Deer. We built some seriously long lasting connections so whenever we go back, as my boyfriend is from Red Deer, I hit up all my friends,” said Russell.

Working at the Michener Extendicare after graduation, she started to dabble back into her musical aspirations. Russell played at the Ranchman bar in Calgary, at Red Deer’s Westerner Days, and started to network in the music industry after moving to Calgary four years ago to be with her boyfriend of now seven years.

But it wasn’t until last year when Russell had her “a-ha” moment.

The loss of her brother-in-law in 2020 to a heart related issue at a rock-climbing competition took a toll on her family. On top of the shock, the neuroscience unit where she worked at a hospital in Calgary became the COVID unit. Russell was now a nurse in the heart of the pandemic, in the eye of the storm.

“I just saw too much all the time,” she said. “After Luke passed away and seeing all this tragedy, I was like, ‘forget the past, I don’t know about the future. All we have is right now’.”

Russell describes her days as always being different in the COVID unit.

“People ask me all the time, ‘is it vaxed? Is it unvaxed?’ You know what, it’s random. At one point it was totally unvaxed. Another week, it was majority were vaxed and just a couple unvaxed. It goes in ebbs and flows and no week from the next is the same and we see all kinds of people,” she explained.

The biggest difficulty for Russell was the loss of morale among her team fueled by what she describes as toxicity and division.

“I used to very much love my job. When I started, we had the most amazing team on earth,” she reminisced.

“When we became the COVID unit, and this is not just me, everyone will tell you this, the morale has just tanked, and I say that with an exclamation point. I think it’s because people are burnt out but it’s like junior high. Just tattling on every little thing; it’s bitter.”

The hostility, stress, and lack of support became too much for the nurse. Her perspective on music and its role in her life started to change.

“I know I can make something of myself and I know I can do this as my job. Fame and fortune; irrelevant,” Russell told herself.

The goal for her music, she says, is to heal a divided country during these times.

Her first single, “Losing Game” released in early 2022, describes the story of a close college friend whose fiancée left her just shortly before her wedding this past summer. The song was played on an Edmonton based radio station on Jan. 27.

After taking an online boot camp course from the United Kingdom-based Songwriting Academy, Russell met industry players from Spain, Sweden, Paris, and Edmonton, and is currently in collaboration with them for three new song releases she expects this March.

The big dream for Russell would be to gradually transition over to living a life off her talent. A tough industry filled with rejection, she says the grind doesn’t intimidate her one bit.

“I’ve seen, and heard, and smelled it all. Nothing fazes me anymore.”

Find more about Keeley Russell on her website.