Creating album a transcendent time for Grant
Jenn Grant is continuing to grow, and is hoping to bring her audience along for the ride.
Interviewed shortly after a trip to Australia for the Big Sound Festival, the Halifax-based musician was preparing to present the songs from her latest album, The Beautiful Wild, to a hometown crowd for the first time.
Grant said the album is something of a departure from her 2011 release, Honeymoon Punch. Inspired by a previous collaboration with hip-hop artist and fellow Halifax native Buck 65, Grant said she brought a different approach to the record.
“It explores a lot of natural sounds. It’s a more sophisticated album, more organic. I tried a new writing technique using my voice as the main instrument, kind of the leading instrument, inspired by working with Buck 65 and his production team,” she said.
Grant also drew inspiration from her surroundings as she was putting the album together.
“I felt very inspired, working in the country, that environment of snowy, wintry, cosy solitude brought out these songs.” Grant said that the songs for this album also came out much faster than in previous recordings.
“It felt almost like a transcendent experience I guess, kind of just tapping into a creative energy and letting the songs come. We didn’t have time to process the songs until they were already scratch vocals with drums and bass, and then I spent the winter thinking about them and thinking about what kind of album I wanted it to be and what would suit the songs best.”
One element that did remain the same from Grant’s previous record was her continued collaboration with husband Daniel Ledwell, who produced the album.
“We understand each other’s interests really well. As we both grow as artists in different ways, we bring things to each other. We spend a lot of time talking about music and listening to music. It seems only natural that we would work together,” Grant said.
Grant is going to be touring heavily in support of The Beautiful Wild over the next couple of months and said she is looking forward to performing the new songs for a live audience.
“I hope they feel a connectedness to it, and they feel it’s a heartfelt presentation. The audience is always a really big part of my shows and I just hope they get as much out of it as we get out of performing it,” she said. Grant added that the new approach she took while recording The Beautiful Wild should translate well to her fans.
“I think the most important thing is to be an authentic artist and keep challenging myself, and I feel like I can challenge my audience, I have a really intelligent audience who likes that, so I’m not worried about that at all,” she said.