Photo: Courtesy of Noeline Hofmann

Just north of Montana, in the southeast corner of Alberta, lies a geological oddity. The coulees and ravines that once swelled with glacial waters have patiently carved into the prairie bedrock forming the dramatic Alberta Badlands, creating a landscape punctuated by terracotta-hued hoodoos, canyons, and red boulders - a striking juxtaposition from the subtle beauty of the plains. This environment, with its beautiful variety, is conducive to quiet contemplation and occasionally it gets a champion. Its latest voice is Noeline Hofmann, the 21-year-old singer-songwriter who grew up on these badlands and whose near meteoric rise is thanks in part to her masterful meditations on rural living.

Her skillful, place-based songwriting, along with her timeless voice, caught the attention of country superstar Zach Bryan, who describes Hofmann’s song “Purple Gas,” as “one of the most beautiful songs ever written.” In the last six months Hofmann has released a duet with Bryan, signed to La Honda Records, went on her first tour ever with Charley Crockett, amassed millions of streams on Spotify, and garnered thousands and thousands of fans – consistently selling out her solo shows. Her fast track to fame may be reminiscent of classic stories like, A Star is Born, but it’s a story with a lot less glamor and a lot more grit. It’s a story that starts on the prairie soil.

“Prairie people are neighborly people, and tough people. With great senses of humor too, you have to have a great sense of humor to survive on the prairie or in farming and ranching,” Noeline Hofmann shares with me over the phone from her hometown. She finds a rare quiet moment between support tours with Colter Wall and Wyatt Flores, and before more dates with Shane Smith and The Saints. The Alberta Badlands singer knows her fair share about prairie people. The daughter of aerial applicators (crop dusters), and before that a long lineage of farmers, Hofmann grew up in Bow Island, Alberta. With a population just exceeding 2,000 people, the town is rural but has highly productive land with some of the most advanced irrigation systems in the world, and a thriving dry edible bean industry. 

Noeline spent her adolescent years working what she describes as blue and pink collar jobs. “I started with grunt farm work like rouging canola, or doing any kind of shitty labor job, just because I loved it and loved being out on the farm.” She found herself having a deep interest in grasslands and gravitating towards native plant species, not domestic crops. “I ended up taking a special interest in the grasslands, and grassland health. Which ended up becoming a fascination with cowboy culture, and wanting to reconnect with cattle and ranching.” 

Utilizing cattle to mimic keystone ruminants like bison that graze on large grasslands, ranching can support native grasses, and offers a compelling tool in responsible land management. At age 16, Hofmann began working at a local cow-calf operation. There she helped tag calves, gave vaccines, and participated in her first brandings. Upon graduating highschool she opted to not go to University and after a few odd jobs (cashier, receptionist, bartender) she moved to a ranch in western Manitoba. “Man, that was a really huge experience in my life. It was an intense coming of age.”

In the early spring of 2021 she arrived at Poplarview Stock Farm, owned and operated by Trevor Atchison, a fourth generation rancher. On average The Century Farm calves 750 calves, runs 700 yearlings, and bales between 3,000-5,000 bales of hay. It’s a large but efficient operation, primarily run by the Atchison family, but during her season Hofmann was the sole hired hand. “When Noeline arrived at our ranch, she was very much a greenhorn. She had been on ranches in southern Alberta, but not quite at the same day-to-day grueling pace of other operations,” Atchison shared over the phone after evening ranch chores. “In her role she was a lone wolf, and would have to preserve through things.”

She arrived right before calving season, and the ranch was covered in snow. She was a quick and dedicated student, having to adjust to the cyclical rhythm of agricultural work. “As the seasons changed my roles changed,” Hofmann explained. “When I first arrived in the early spring, I was monitoring herd health during calving. I would go around in the morning, make notes, see who looked close to calving, and check if any of the calves or cows needed to be treated, or if we needed to pull a calf.”

Her responsibilities were diverse and constant. “We also did rotational grazing. I monitored grass in pastures daily to determine when the cattle would need to be moved to the next plot and moved them accordingly. I did a lot of fencing, and then later in the summer was hay season.” She also assisted in processing days, vaccinations days, and moving herds. “It was super, super busy. I knew next to jack all in the beginning, it was baptism by fire. My ranching journey is far from over, and I have a lifetime of learning left.”

She left quite an impression on the Atchison family. “Anything we asked her to do, she just did it. If she wasn’t sure how to do something, or if she knew I was busy, she would just persevere and mend it or fix it, or get it going along. Whatever she had to do, be it water systems, electric fences, she’d figure it out,” Atchison explained. “When she first came here, she could hardly carry a 50 pound salt block. By the time she left, she could carry two at a time, just like nobody’s business. Noeline is a tough full of grit worker. That just puts her head down, and away she goes.”

Hofmann’s time at Poplarview Stock Farm forever informed her writing, and was part of the inspiration for her famed “Purple Gas.” But her interest in art started in childhood. A gifted writer from a young age, Hofmann excelled at English Language Arts. “Man, I mean I was a little bit of a language arts freak,” she recalls with a laugh. “I could read from a young age. Writing was my strong suit. My English teachers would try to give me more challenging materials.” One particularly adept teacher encouraged Hofmann to attend a YouthWrite camp.” There weren’t many opportunities for the arts in my hometown, and I hadn’t felt like I fit in yet. But that writing camp really inspired me and affirmed to me that the arts were as important as I felt they were but had yet to see in action.” Her family also encouraged her, both on the writing front, but also with the music. The daughter of two musically inclined parents who have “music in their bones” Hofmann took piano lessons at a young age. In her early teens she started playing guitar and pairing her poems with instrumentation.

Her innate ability coupled with an unrelenting work ethic, alongside real world working ranch experience, became the perfect catalyst for her now almost signature writing style – an insider’s view on often overly romanticized occupations. Nowhere is that more apparent than the title track of her EP, “Purple Gas.” The song that helped catapult her career, was inspired by her youth in southern Alberta and her ranch work in Western Manitoba. Purple gas refers to the tax deducted fuel in Canada for farm, ranch, and agricultural use, it is dyed to distinguish it from domestic fuel (bronze) and requires a special license plate. For Noeline “Purple gas, as a commodity, symbolizes resilience and rural attitude and where I’m from.”

In a genre that can sometimes rely on tired phrases like whiskey and women, or pick-up trucks and red solo cups, Hofmann offers a sharp perspective with refreshing rural accuracy. With lyrics like, A sly thumb of rye sometimes, Keep a bottle hid with the Bio-Mycin, (Bio-Mycin being a broad spectrum antibiotic used for cattle) Hofmann masterfully interjects accurate vignettes of ranchers and farmers. At the risk of alienating some listeners with her specificity, Hofmann simultaneously balances her songwriting with universal storytelling like, Was taught to not throw the first fist, But if you take a hit, finish that son-of-a-bitch, In a life having the upper hand’s a myth, Your only fighting chance is too stubborn to quit. This juxtaposition of an undeniable sense of place skillfully balanced with the struggles of the human condition makes Hofmann a rare (and possibly generational) talent. 

Though “Purple Gas” is her most well-known song on her EP (released October 18th, produced by Patrick Lyons), the tracklist is heavy with Hofmann’s old-soul storytelling. A remarkable feat for an artist in the infancy of her career (she’s only 21), and with some of the tracks being written when she was as young as 18. Tunes like the beautifully poignant “August” with lyrics like, Summer wanes, so lifts the veil on the hauntin’ August brought me/Foreboding feeling in my bones insists there’s weather comin’. A song that reflects on tragic farming accidents of Hofmann’s own inner circle, fire season, and other personal losses. As she shares, The eighth month killed my innocence.

The heavy songs are balanced with rowdy nights, a needed balm (or perhaps distraction) from the sometimes painful aspects of agricultural work. “Rodeo Junkies” being a nod to the sport and its transient and often near-obsessive participants. As Hofmann quips, It’s been the same old shit every year/And he really should’ve known/Marry a girl who runs the pattern/And around and around you’ll go. As a recovering barrel racer, this is a sentiment I can relate to. Hofmann, though not a competitor, grew up around rodeo and its accompanying good time partying culture.

“I had many nights of guitar pulls and whiskey and sleeping in my jeans,” she confesses. A relatively recent period of heel kicking between ranching in Manitoba in 2022 and her career skyrocketing this last year. A time when she decided to get serious with her music, “I’ve always had a cowboy dream, but my greatest north star dream has always been to be an artist. I wanted to do it full time, and I was ready to chase it down. It’s always been in my heart, but I didn’t admit it to anyone for a long time.” She applied the same work ethic that served her at the ranch to pursuing music. She gigged, immersed herself in the regional Canadian music scene, and fell in and out of love. 

All of these experiences in turn found their way into her music. “I had a whirlwind ‘situationship’ as the kids call it these days. He encouraged my songwriting, and I started singing in his band. We were a rag tag group of songwriters in the southwest corner of Alberta. He was 10 years older than me, and recently divorced. It was just one of those, I should’ve known better,” Hofmann shares good-naturedly. The subsequent heartbreak became the loose inspiration  (“not to give him too much credit,” she adds with a smirk) for the songs “One Hell of a Woman” and “The Way You Bring Me To Tears”. “The end of that relationship poured gas on the fire in me. It was the feeling of reckless abandon I needed to give me the final push to travel down to Tennessee solo and begin meeting people in music down there. It was a rebirth of the ‘I am going to make this happen with or without you’ attitude in general that I’ve kept in my front pocket while navigating following my dreams.” 

Photo by Christian Heckle

Hofmann may be understated and polite at first read, but on further examination she has a liberating defiance and perseverance. Perhaps unsurprising characteristics if one remembers this is the same woman who pulled calves in the winter and raked hay in the sweltering summer heat. This resilience is proudly on display in “Lighting in July (Prairie Fire)”. With almost prophetic lyrics including ​​Like a rattler on the banks of a green south Alta river/Didn’t hear me over the west wind shaking out a warning/Ah, they didn’t see me coming, must have happened overnight. I pose the question to Hofmann, if she ever gets underestimated. “I can. I’m young. I’m also a woman. But I am going to continue to show up and not focus on all of that shit. You play the hand that you’re dealt. And I’ve been fortunate with my immediate circle, and the experiences I’ve had.” 

Those experiences are fiercely lining up. From opening up for her personal heroes like labelmate Colter Wall and Charley Crockett (her first tour ever) to Zach Bryan performing her song “Purple Gas” (the first cover he’s ever recorded), she is quickly becoming a cornerstone of the country music scene. And arguably just as important, she is another reminder that we all should pay attention to the music coming out of Canada. A scene free of the expectations and restrictions of mainstream music cities like Nashville, or Los Angeles. With alternative country and folk artists creating sonically unique and thoughtful music, like Colter Wall, Bella White, Kacy and Clayton, and Richard Inman. 

It also seems, arguably, that its brightest stewards have a close tie to the land, and an undeniable sense of place. Lyrics like Hofmann’s don’t come from a booked room for a songwriting session. You can’t feel the heat of a prairie fire from behind a screen, get calloused hands from holding a pen, or lose a thumb sitting on your ass. These songs are from working hands and working lands, which is the true genesis of country music, after all.