EVANSVILLE—Fourteen-year-old Ellie Maxwell released her second completely original song, Lucky, on July 1, which tells the story of her being adopted at a very young age from a small town in South Africa and moving to Canada to live with her adopted family, Steve Maxwell and Mary Mendes de Franca and her siblings.
“This song is about my adoption story and how it changed my life forever,” Ms. Maxwell told The Expositor. The song actually started out as a poem written by her aunt Deb Mendes de Franca. “It was written about me and my adoption, by my aunt Deb, and provides a look back at my life and the people of South Africa and Cedarville, the small town I am from, her biological parents and what they would have gone through and her move to Canada to be with my wonderful, loving family.”
Ellie was adopted and brought to Canada when she was eight months old.
“My sister Deb wrote a lovely, long poem about Ellie and her adoption (which was the basis for the song),” said Mary Mendes de Franca. “My sister, Ellie and I worked with a producer from Nashville, Tennessee, Britton Cameron. Ellie had worked with him last year on her first original song, ‘Better Days’ (which was released on August 24, 2021).”
Working with the producer and recording the song took about eight hours in total.
The video footage for the song was done by Robert Maxwell, one of Ellie’s brothers. “Robert did a great job on this and it was so nice working with someone I know so well.”
“I’m taking things slowly, one step at a time,” Ellie said about the future. “We are talking about writing more original songs and busking in Gore Bay this summer.”
“Ellie is preparing to do busking in Gore Bay,” said Mary. “She did one event so far and is hoping to do more, hopefully once a week this summer. We just have to figure out the best day and time for her to entertain.”
This past May, Ellie took first place in the youth division of the 2022 Lions Superstar singing contest in Sudbury and last month she was one of the musical entertainers to perform at the Bluegrass in the Country festival in Providence Bay.
