'I had to get used to Shania Twain being the boss and calling the shots'

• Canadian country singer Lindsay Ell told Yahoo of her experience of joining Shania Twain as the lead guitarist at Glastonbury and British Summer Time Hyde Park. She took us behind the scenes of the music legend's Greatest Hits UK tour.

• Also this summer, Ell played her first solo headline show at London’s Omeara. In the past, the singer has also supported Nicole Kidman's husband Keith Urban on tour and worked as a judge on Canada's Got Talent.

I never thought I would sideman ever. But when I got the call earlier this year from Shania Twain, it was just something that I couldn't say no to.

Obviously, when I do my own shows, I'm the boss and that's really the dynamic I've known most of my life. So I'm used to calling the shots and making the set list and deciding what I want to wear and then walking into Shania's camp and now seeing this is what she wants to do, this is walking into her world.

It's been such an incredible learning experience, being able to really work hands-on with one of my heroes is something that I would always want to do. I mean, I would have done it for free. But the fact that I'm being paid to be here is just like an added bonus and I've just learned so much from her. She's so wonderful and she's so smart and it's been the best summer.

It always amazes me when I get to work with these A-class artists on how hard they work. Because you think that once you reach a certain level of success, it gets easier and easier and your team gets bigger and bigger. Your team definitely does get bigger and bigger and you have more people helping you for sure but I feel the work just gets harder and there is more pressure. It's interesting to watch artists like Shania who have been doing this for so long and have stayed at the top of her game for so long.

The greatest thing I've learned from her is just keeping a high caliber, everything that she does and really wanting to put her stamp on everything she does from the set list to the blend of the harmonies to the wardrobe. She really wants to make sure that the fans are getting the best experience they can.

This is actually one of my favourite moments from behind the scenes in rehearsals. Shania has this way of empowering the people that are in the band and crew and on her road family because she knows what she wants and she's not afraid to ask for it. Instead of making it complicated or difficult, she just empowers people to be better and to challenge themselves so that they can be the best that they can physically be. As a leader of my own band, I just was so enamoured by the way she leads her whole crew for that reason.

Shania was the reason I started singing when I was a little girl. So I remember the first song that really got me into Shania. Her single No One Needs to Know was in the movie Twister that has just been remade. Now on stage, I am playing that song with her and she's three feet away from me. The very song that inspired me to learn how to sing in the first place. So my whole body is like, ‘Wait, what’. I remember being eight years old, singing into a plastic microphone that my mom got from the dollar store and learning how to sing and now I'm singing next to this same woman on stage. It is very crazy, full circle moment.

There was this instant bond right away and that has only grown and flourished with time and I just love her so much. I first opened for Shania last year on the Queen of Me tour. I had ultimate respect and I have looked up to her most of my career. So I think she felt that and she appreciated my musicianship and the fact that we're both Canadians too.

Shania is the ultimate professional and she just makes it look like everything's cool. I think everybody had sound issues that day at Glastonbury.

Sound difficulties are to be expected with any festivals where you're moving so many artists on and off stage in such little time and we don't really have the opportunity to do our normal sound checks that we all usually do when we're playing our own shows. Also I think that it gets blown out of proportion. Sometimes the one person talks about it then it's sort of like the game of telephone. As professionals, you just sort of work your way through it and it's just part of what we do.

I have never been to Glastonbury, so it was my very first time on the Pyramid stage. It was a very legendary day and the fact that Shania played the Legend spot and there were 140,000 people watching our show. It was wild. It was really, really hard to comprehend even standing on stage in the midst of it. In a heartbeat, I would love to play my own set of Glastonbury.

The most challenging part of the road is the logistics of it, getting from A to B. There are unglamorous parts of the road. Everybody looks at it and it's like, 'Oh, man, that must be so fun, you get to go so many places and you get to travel around the world'.

Yes, it is wonderful and awesome. And it's also exhausting a lot of times. I have been to a lot of places but I haven't seen a lot of places. I've seen a lot of taxis and Ubers and backstages and hotel rooms and airports.

So what's next for me? Where do we begin with that list? I am getting ready to release a new project and I'm so excited about this music that I've been working on. It feels really authentic to where I am and it is the music I wanted to make for a long, long time. So I really hope that, in the next year this music can find people who resonate with it and it can keep me touring around the world.

Lindsay Ell told her story to Lily Waddell.

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