FREE – JANN ARDEN IN HER OWN WORDSIt’s not easy writing about yourself…or myself as it were. But here I go, about to ramble on quite gladly about all things me.I feel like I should give a brief synopsis of how I even got to this point in my life. We lived, and still live, in a very small community south of Calgary. I didn’t roll far from the tree. I don’t plan on rolling.My mother, Joan Richards, was taking guitar lessons when I was 12 years old. She needed something to do while I was engaged in hockey practice at the Rockyview Community Association. If you’ve ever tried to learn to play guitar, you find out very quickly that it’s hell on your fingers. They become bloody knobs. Mom gave up within a few months, after having perfected “On Top of Old Smokey”, and “Irene, Goodnight Irene”.I used to sit atop the stairs in our living room and watch her strum away, struggling to make the chords sound like something, singing quietly, not knowing anyone was listening. I was intrigued to say the least.Whenever I had a spare moment I’d grab that giant Yamaha guitar, open her large orange songbook, and try to figure out how to make something happen. After learning a few chords, I was able to play the entire John Denver collection. I moved on to Janis Ian, The Carpenters, Frank Zappa, James Taylor, Bette Midler, Olivia Newton John, ABBA, KISS, Blondie, Carly Simon, Seals and Crofts, and a hundred other artists that I wanted to dissect and emulate. I was overjoyed. I had found something that I loved to do. That I could do on my own, that I could do without having to be funny. Writing unlocked my imagination and the very key to my soul.I was obsessed with all things guitar. John Denver, not so much, but it was a great start to understanding that people wrote songs about simple sentiment. I started writing my own songs that same year …they were all terribly sad and lonesome and introspective and usually long and winding ballads. The first song I ever remember writing was about my mom and dad dying. The song was called “Paradise”. I still laugh about that one…It would take me an entire book to cover what’s happened between then and now, that perhaps will be at another time.“FREE” is my tenth studio record. That in-and-of-itself is unbelievable to me. I didn’t sign with Universal until I was nearly 30 years old, so all of this came to me rather late in life. In light of labels signing 15 year old acts these days, I don’t think my story will be repeated very often, if ever. I am 47 now and feel like I don’t know anything about music. I feel like I am just getting started.With “FREE”, I’ve more or less gone back to my roots. All 11 of the songs are very simple in their message. They are all about simple human sentiment. Not political in nature, not preachy, not overly poetic, just very simple basic emotions. I did a fair amount of co-writing on this project to try and get my mind pushing into different corners of my own understanding. That was a wonderful, educational experience. I didn’t want to keep making the same record over and over again, and I felt like I had begun to do that over the past 5 or 6 years. I just found myself in a rut for a thousand reasons, so I was determined to make some big changes.It’s hard to change. It’s hard to move forward for the most part…. But I knew I had to. It’s not easy breaking off relationships that you’ve nurtured for a long time, but art suffers if you don’t constantly try to reinvent yourself, which is what I feel like I did with this record.I worked with an old friend of mine, Bruce Leitl, who is more known for his work on composing music scores for film and commercial use, than he is for pop music production.Bruce is a brilliant musician and a wonderful composer. He has a wonderful sense of structure. I needed structure. I wanted to be very clear as to what my intentions were. He kept me on track. I wanted to experiment with different textures and grooves and sounds and Bruce was confident in what we needed to do. He presented ideas to me that were exciting and innovative. I felt like it was a new and fresh version of me and my work. Because of the amount of time that I’d spent in Nashville the previous year and a half, I felt it only natural to use some of the extraordinary musicians.Mandolins and acoustic guitars and pedal steel and dobro and banjo…all sounds that I loved, but had never thought to use these past 25 years. Between those organic sounds and Bruce’s progressive programming, I knew I’d done something very different for me, but yet, extremely familiar. We knew with the blend of organic and electronic sounds we’d threaded together that we’d need someone amazingly gifted to mix the entire project. I didn’t have to think twice. It would be Ed Cherney. I won’t list off his thousands of triumphs: you can do that on the world wide web. He was as much a part of the music as the music itself. I trusted him completely to carve his way through the hundreds of tracks we’d recorded. I love what he’s done and I’m proud of what we have made.I’ve found a great amount of comfort in my life over the past 3 years…amazing peace and happiness. For whatever reason, I feel like that all shows up here on “FREE”. I do feel free. I feel like I’ve come over the hill and I can see much clearer than I did before.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:
Millions of records sold worldwide, with 16 top ten singles from eight albums: Time for Mercy, Living Under June, Happy?, Blood Red Cherry, Greatest HurtsñThe Best of, Live With the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Love Is The Only Soldier, Jann Arden and her latest release, Uncover Me.
Winner of 8 (eight) Junos, 8 (eight) 2006 SOCAN Awards, 2 (two) 2006 Western Canadian Music Awards and many other industry accolades including a star on Canadaís Walk of Fame.
JANN IS A SUPPORTER OF THE FOLLOWING CHARITIES:
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