After Forty Years In The Music Business,
This Canadian Music Icon Still Brings
Her A-Game To The Stage
Story by Matthew St. Amand
Photography by Alkan Emin
Iconic singer-songwriter, Jann Arden, is coming to Windsor on August 25 for an 8 p.m. performance at the Colosseum at Caesars Windsor.
During Jann’s storied, forty-year career in entertainment, she has released fifteen albums, amassed nineteen Top-10 singles, garnered eight JUNO Awards—including Female Artist of the Year and Songwriter of the Year—10 SOCAN Awards and four Western Canadian Music Awards. In 2021, Jann was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, where she joined Canadian music luminaries, including Alanis Morissette, Bryan Adams and Shania Twain. Jann was also inducted into the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame, has a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame and has been awarded the Order of Canada.
She has published five books since 2002 and her book-length work of fiction is due for publication this November. Jann starred in three seasons of the situation comedy “Jann” based loosely on her life and hosts The Jann Arden Podcast.
“Many years ago, Grandma told me to spread myself thin,” Jann says during her conversation with Windsor Life Magazine. “Seeds don’t grow if you plunk them down in one hole. She told me to try lots of different things!”
Born in Calgary, Jann was still a child when her family moved to Springbank, Alberta.
“I grew up in the country,” she says. “I went to school with forty-two kids at Springbank Community High School. I’m surprised that I can read and write! The teachers were great, it’s just that we were lunatics. People rode their horses to school and tied them up at a STOP sign. It was the wild west.”
Jann’s father was a construction contractor, and her mother was a dental assistant.
“It was the 1960s, and there was no mall for kids to go to after school,” Jann continues. “Our nearest neighbour was a mile away. So, it was in my parents’ basement that I escaped, listening to records. There was an old, battered guitar, and I found a finger chart that showed some chords. Right out of the gate, I was making up my own songs. Then, slowly, over time, mimicking other musicians and singers. By the time I was eighteen, I had written about two hundred songs—terrible songs! At the first sound of someone coming down the stairs, the guitar was thrown into the corner, and I pretended to be listening to Donna Summer!”
It’s so much better now. I think we are all—myself, the band, our crew—we appreciate it so much. We are filled with gratitude. It’s completely exciting and fun. I really enjoy the vibe now.
With her grandmother’s advice in the back of her mind, Jann embarked to become a professional musician.
“I busked in Vancouver,” she recalls. “Performed up in Dawson Creek and Yellowknife and Whitehorse and the Yukon and interior B.C. and northern Manitoba. Never mind the ‘B circuit’ I was on the ‘D circuit!’ I just didn’t have the sense to stop.”
It was her second album, Living Under June, released in 1994, that brought Jann and her music to a wider audience, with hits such as “Insensitive”, “Could I Be Your Girl?” and “Good Mother”. From that time onward, she has not looked back.
In 2022, Jann released her latest album, Descendant. Comprised of fifteen tracks—the most songs she has released on an album—Jann’s voice is in top-form. And so is her songwriting with deeply personal lyrics and self-revelations. This is the Jann we all know and love, who holds nothing back.
Speaking about the track “Was I Ever 13” Jann says: “It’s an absolutely autobiographical song. A lot of times, I borrow from other people’s lives, but ‘Was I Ever 13’ is about my dad being drunk and my brother huffing gasoline, and me being the homely girl in school… It’s about waiting to go out on a date and have somebody kiss you…”
Tracks like “Moonbow”, “Loving You Is Like a Job” and “Glass Jar” are possessed of particular beauty. The music on this album is especially rich and evocative, which is quite amazing considering the songs were pieced together over a period of twenty months when Jann and her collaborators were seldom in the same city. Any skeptic wondering if Jann still has her “pipes” after four decades will have all doubts swept away by the track “Pink”, where Jann’s singular voice soars.
After all these years in music, the success and accolades, has performing before an audience lost any of its shine for Jann?
“No,” she says. “It’s so much better now. I think we are all—myself, the band, our crew—we appreciate it so much. We are filled with gratitude. I think when you’re trying to break into the music business and try and establish yourself, there is this constant push forward, and it is really exhausting. Now, it’s completely exciting and fun. I really enjoy the vibe now. We’re not drunk! We’re not hungover! We’re all so much more sensible! And it’s so great having a body of work where I can sit and play for a couple of hours, and I can see people going ‘Oh God, I was in high school when that song came out!’ Or ‘I broke up with my boyfriend!’ I can see their faces reminiscing as we go, and it makes the night really enjoyable.”
She continues: “Every time I sing ‘Insensitive’, or ‘Good Mother’, or ‘Could I Be Your Girl’, it’s like the first time I’ve ever sung them. There’s a newness because the band always approaches it in a different way. The songs just reinvent themselves every time you put them on the wheel and spin it around. There is a lot of joy in music. I’ll tell you, when I put on a Nina Simone record, Billie Holliday, or an Amy Winehouse from back in the day, I am just transported. I have a visceral reaction to listening to music. Music has changed and enhanced my life.”
Jann Arden will be at the Colosseum at Caesars Windsor on August 25 at 8 p.m. For ticket information, visit www.caesars.com/caesars-windsor/shows, and to learn more about what Jann has going on, visit her website at jannarden.com.
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