Brett Kissel

An award-winning country performer hailing from northeastern Alberta, Brett Kissel launched his recording career without delay by issuing his first album at age 12. He followed with several well-received projects, among them Started with a Song (2013) and Pick Me Up (2015), each attaining gold status in Canada. On his subsequent releases, Now or Never (2020) and What Is Life? (2021), Kissel folded pop influences into his established mix of traditional and Canadian country.

Rooted in the steady discipline gained from ranch work in Flat Lake, he received his first guitar at age six and delivered his initial live performance only a few years afterward. After Keepin' It Country appeared in 2003, three further independent albums followed—By Request (2004), Tried and True: A Canadian Tribute (2006), and My Roots Run Deep (2008)—before he signed with Warner Music Canada in 2013. That year also brought his major-label debut, Started with a Song, which earned the rising artist his first Juno nomination. Pick Me Up, his sixth studio album, entered the Canadian Albums chart at number seven in 2015; the same release earned him a Canadian Country Music Association Award, multiple Association of Country Music in Alberta Awards, and a second Juno nomination.

We Were That Song (2017) yielded four Top Ten singles, among them the gold-certified title track, and captured the Juno Award for Country Album of the Year. Kissel’s fourth studio album, Now or Never, surfaced in 2020 and featured “Drink About Me,” his first single aimed at American audiences. Following four Canadian Country Music Awards, he opened 2021 with “Make a Life, Not a Living,” the lead single from his fifth album, What Is Life?