MUSICAL GIFT
Jann Arden's busy with a Christmas album, writing a novel and telling her music history
ATB Storytellers with Jann Arden takes place Wednesday at the Boyce Theatre. For tickets go to nmc.ca/ whats-on/. Her new album A Jann Arden Christmas is released Friday.
It’s getting near that time when most people begin wrapping up their business for the year. Work busy is replaced by holiday busy.
Such is not the case for Calgary native Jann Arden, who is heading into a period of work busy plus holiday busy, which, not surprisingly equals “exceptionally busy.” And she is grateful for it. It’s been a remarkably difficult time for the singer, with her father having recently died after a long battle with dementia and her mother also suffering from the disease.
With her focus being pulled in the direction of a number of different projects, she’s been able to maintain something of a balance and find solace in the aspects of work and life that make her happy.
“You learn a lot about being in the moment and what’s important, that’s for sure,” Arden says from Nashville, where she’s working on completing a novel.
That book, her first work of fiction is one of a couple of firsts in her 30-year-career that will keep her busy over the next couple of months.
She’s hoping to deliver the completed manuscript to the publishers before Christmas, “but God only knows.”
She laughs. “It’s only been two years, c’mon. Donna Tartt takes 10 years,” Arden says.
The plot of the story is one that she describes vaguely as a coming-of-age story, “a tangled kind of treacherous, lecherous, murderous tale of animal abuse” set in a rural world there are grandparent’s raising their young daughter’s child as if it were there own, there’s deceit, betrayal and …
“There’s talking cows in this book,” she says. “Do I really need to tell you anything else?” Nope. On board. As for anyone else, her hopes for the project are typically modest and self-effacing, although she’s obviously proud of what she’s managed to put together.
“It could be a piece of piece of s--- and end up in a garbage can somewhere outside of Lethbridge, but I’ve had such a great time doing it. It’s been a learning experience and so challenging. I will not be at all offended if they look at me like I’ve got three heads and a fork up my arse and go, ‘Yeah, no but thanks.’ And that’s OK, too …
“But I love it. I personally think it’s fantastic, right up there with Dickens and Jackie Collins.”
It’s a different type of storytelling that will be discussed this Wednesday night when Arden sits down with famed industry icon Holger Petersen.
Arden will be the guest and subject in the National Music Centre’s inaugural instalment of the ATB Storytellers Series, which is a project to gather and collect the oral histories of this province’s music history — something that Arden is more than happy to be a part of.
“I think it’s great to start having a record of the Alberta music industry, and further to that, of course, the Canadian music industry,” she says of the long-term goal of NMC and their future plans for their new home, Studio Bell, being built in Calgary’s East Village.
“But I hope they really gather those great stories from Ian Tyson and k.d. (lang) and Carolyn Dawn Johnson and Nickelback and Tegan and Sara. There are hundreds of people that have come out of our neck of the woods who are doing exceptionally well, in music, all over the world.”
It will be Arden’s stories that come first, though, with her submitting to a grilling by the longtime broadcaster, producer and Stony Plain Records label head Petersen to be recorded in front of an audience in the Boyce Theatre.
“Holger is kind of treasure trove of useless information. He’s friends with Neil MacGoni-gill (Arden’s first manager), and he’ll know all of the early stuff, too. He’ll probably know all the sordid details of me coming up through the ranks in the late ’80s and stuff like that. So I have no idea what he’ll throw at me. I don’t know what to expect.
She will also perform acoustically a few songs from her evergrowing catalogue of work.
This Friday, that will increase again, with the release of another first for the artist — her debut Christmas album. Titled, simply, A Jann Arden Christmas, the album was produced by her now go-to collaborator Bob Rock, and features her performing a mix of secular and religious fare such as The Little Drummer Boy, Silver Bells, I’ll Be Home for Christmas and Blue Christmas, in a very traditional manner.
Ultimately, like that almost-done novel, she’s proud of what they came up with calling it “a fantastic record … just a great sounding, great record,” and is looking forward to the promotional aspect of it that will keep her busy over the next few months.