I feel like I say this all the time but maybe I only feel it - love and loss are two sides of the same coin and we can’t experience one without the other.

I don’t know when exactly I understood this to be true, maybe it’s always been there - or it could just feel true lately. I have loved and lost many times throughout my life and this song is one way that I have come to understand the experience.

This song came to me quickly. It was one of the rare experiences where I set out to write the song rather than allowing the song to find me as is my more common method.

Both ways work for me and I feel blessed to be able to tap into a seemingly endless pool of consciousness for inspiration. In early January of last year I decided I would write a song a day for four days and this song came through among a few others. This is the only one of those songs that made it on the record, but it needed to because it thematically fit so well among the other waltzes.

It’s a love song as well as a grief song in that the opening verse is this:

This song is about a love that transcends lifetimes, that supersedes life and death. It’s a love so big that even when it’s over it lives on. It is it’s own entity and outlasts even the very people who experience it.

The whip-poor-will is named onomatopoeically after it’s song, more often heard than seen, it’s commonly cited in legends as an omen of death.

Hank Williams wrote of the whip-poor-will sounding too blue to fly in I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry. Jason Molina sings of the whip-poor-will in Southern Cross Hotel when he nearly stops the song completely to sing for those left behind.

In my song it is the death of the relationship that is grieved, yet even long after the whip-poor-will has sung, flown, and is long gone, the love remains, it is older than time.

And then the lonesome call of grief and love as one sound carries the song without lyrics. It’s a sacred and haunting thing to hold a love that has no ending and to grieve it anyhow.

photos by Charleigh Arnason

Oh My Darling

Now the leaves begin to turn

When are you coming home

When the forests stop burning . . .

Days, months, years of my adult life have been spent in remote bush camps across this country. Specifically across the northwest of this country. The Yukon, Northwest Territory, High Arctic, and Northern British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario. Traveling to work sites by tiny bush planes, Dash-7’s, helicopters, trucks and boats. Often times not knowing what I am walking into and finding my role on the fly. There are so many industries in Canada that require teams of people to set up remote and temporary camps and almost exactly ten years I go I fell into the role of camp cook. Some say the cook has the hardest job in camp. It’s a multi-faceted role that can include anything and everything you can think of in a remote community. I have arrived on site to find there isn’t a kitchen until a wall tent is raised. I have sourced, purified, pumped, hauled, thawed and rationed water. I have been the cook and the first aid attendant. I have prepared and executed three meals a day for anywhere from three to over a hundred hungry working people. Sometimes you run out of propane, diesel or gasoline. Oftentimes you make quick decisions on the fly. Equipment breaks down. New equipment takes time. People are cranky. People are picky. People get sick. People want you to listen to them, they want a friend, an aunty, a mother, a nurse. The camp cook is the pillar of a remote camp and the kitchen is the hearth.

feeding a whiskey jack at a remote camp in the Yukon

I didn’t mean to do this type of work for long, and somehow I have found myself currently preparing for yet another spring contract cooking for tree-planters. At this point in the game I do feel that I am well beyond my expiry date - every great camp cook has one. It’s an all encompassing role where your work is never done, you’re the first one up and the last to go to sleep. And sleep, precious sleep, is so fragmented and coveted. Yet these are my personal golden handcuffs that have allowed me the financial freedom to take most of the year off to prioritize my creative pursuits. I fell into the rhythm of seasonal work in my early 20’s and have never looked back. I was never meant to work 9-5. I need a lot of breathing room to remain wild in my soul and keep a direct line to my creative inspiration. I wish the same for all people. It has been a choice of mine to remain a contractor and gig-worker to maintain my independent sense of freedom. It has come with big sacrifices and I am always working at wrangling self-directed discipline into my daily routine. I have no regrets, but now I am tired.

The industries for which I have served this role have varied from tree planting camps to reclamation projects to surveying sites to gold mines to film crews to heli-ski lodges to retreat centres . . . the list goes on.

When I wrote Oh My Darling I had recently been cooking for forest fire fighters in 2023, one of the worst years for fires we have seen. I had been working with my partner at the time in a series of remote camps across western Canada. As fall was approaching we were nearing the end of a long season and we were tired. With next to no days off in months we had little left to give and I called my season’s end before he did. As I drove away from the camp, and my partner, I felt defeated. I didn’t have the energy to keep working but I also knew that with every passing mile between us the distance grew and we would be worlds apart. He would be immersed in the demands of camp work and I would be back at home returning to a different routine. In the weeks that followed it was challenging to keep in touch. I wrote Oh My Darling about the reality of a long distance love in the context of seasonal work. It touches on the hopefulness of the season’s change to autumn, when most seasonal work ends and workers can return home. It also highlights the sense of helplessness felt when one’s fate is in the hands of nature. Working in a forest firefighting camp it is the fire itself that decides when the work is done. And so I waited, I wrote, I pined and held patience, for my loved one to be able to come safely home to me.

Listen to Oh My Darling here.

As always thank you for being here. Xx

I have also evolved as a being. I do not feel like like the same person at all who sat down to record all of these songs in the little cabin in the mountains. I feel like this experience transformed me and now I am a newer stranger version of myself. A mother of songs.

I hope you have listened to the album, and I hope you love it. And if you don’t that’s also fine, just never tell me.

Over the next several weeks I’m going to be writing a little more about the songs on the album, how I came to write them, what they mean to me, how they have shape-shifted with time - before my very eyes. If you didn’t already catch it - I wrote about the first track on the album (and first single I released) Broke My Heart In Two - back in October. You can read about it here.

And I will just sign off with saying that today is Bandcamp Friday - which is a gorgeous international day of supporting musicians world wide - today all proceeds from purchases made on bandcamp go directly to the artists. My records are still being manufactured, but if you’ve been thinking of preordering today would be a great day to do it. You can make a purchase for preorder here.

Thank you as always for being here. Love you xx

Album art by Erik M. Grice

Photography by Georgi Silckerodt

Enter arts funding. I got a grant. Now suddenly I can afford to pay people to create art with me. . . and the rest is history. I already had most of the songs. I wrote one of the songs on the record the week of (but i’ll dive into that in a future post). The rest of the songs were ready and had BEEN ready for a while.

Broke My Heart in Two - it goes without saying that this is both a love song and a heartbreak song - two of country music’s favourite topics. I wrote this song during a songwriting residency in March of 2024. It was sort of a last minute thing that I was even in the residency. Impulsivity is my general operating system. My friend and collaborator Sarah Orton was returning for her second year in the residency and invited me to join when there was a last minute spot made available. It was one of the best creative practices I’ve done to date.

The residency was one week long, it was hosted by Howard Billerman (Hotel2Tango) and it was over zoom. All of these really great artists got online every morning and Howard would give us a prompt for writing our song of the day. To Sarah’s and my disadvantage we were meeting at 7:00 am, when almost everyone else were in Montréal or Toronto, and meeting at a far more reasonable 10:00 am. After being given our prompt we would typically spend the rest of the day working on a song that we would present to the group in the evening. It was a lot of pressure simply because as any songwriter can tell you songs don’t always just “co-operate”. It can feel trying to write a song in one day. Especially a song you feel has legs enough to present to a group of your peers. But it was SO FUN. I love a challenge and it really took me out of my comfort zone in the best way. Which I also love.

On one of the last days of the residency Howard gave us my favourite prompt of the whole week. It went something like this - “Imagine you’re in a hotel in New York City, you’re on the elevator down to the lobby and when the elevator doors open you see one of your greatest musical idols/influences (dead or alive). They tell you that they’ve been in the studio recording their latest record but they still need one more song to finish the record. They ask you if you have any material that you think might fit that you could bring down to the studio tonight.”

And that’s the prompt.

I’m writing a song for one of my greatest musical idols. Immediately I knew it was Patsy Cline.

I have this whole relationship with the music of Patsy Cline that dates way way back to my childhood. My grandmother was a country singer, my dad was a country singer, they are arguably two of my greatest influences, and they both covered Patsy Cline songs. One of my fondest memories of singing with my dad was one particularly late night of him jamming in the basement with his cousin, many beers deep. He started playing Walking After Midnight and somehow it turned out that I got to sing the words.

It really struck me as a big moment, I loooooooved Patsy Cline and I looooved to sing. So somehow the two have always gone hand in hand for me, but this became especially clear to me when I had my heart absolutely broken in January of 2020. I swiftly fled Vancouver and my life there to hole up in the cradle of the mountains in the southern interior, lived in a sweatsuit and licked my wounds by learning a dozen Patsy Cline songs. No one does heartbreak like she does.

I know that Patsy, although a songwriter herself, had Nashville songwriters writing a lot of her material, for example one of her most well-known songs Crazy was written by Willie Nelson. So choosing our girl as the focus for my songwriting prompt felt especially interesting. What does a song written for Patsy to sing sound like? It sounds like heartbreak, really humiliating stuff, lots of desperation, getting the short end of the stick, being dumped but still pining- still pining. . . It’s almost comically sad.

I started writing Broke My Heart in Two imagining her singing it. How would she sing it, what would the phrasing sound like in her voice? I had to put another 7th chord here, make sure there’s a minor chord there, that sounds right. It’s one of my favourite songs I’ve written, and what I love most is the storyline. Told through a hazy vintage dream lens of pouty heartache, it’s the story of a person waking up from a dream about a lover who she is absolutely pining for, but her lover is marrying someone else, and the listener can never be sure if this whole thing is just a dream or reality. It’s gorgeously and unabashedly delusional and that’s what makes it feel like Patsy Cline to me.

Recording this song with everyone involved really brought it to life in a way I couldn’t have imagined. Dana Lee came to the cabin for a day with her dog, Russy, and while we were recording Trevor’s guitar parts for Broke My Heart In Two it was Dana who first heard the echoing harmonies.

Together with Kacy and I we ironed out their vocal parts and recorded them on the spot. The result was something so magical that mimics a sound from back in time. It really is the thing that makes the song instantly transport the listener in the way that it does. We have Dana to thank for that.

So that’s the true story of this sweet little song.

I’m so grateful to have it out as my first single. I hope you’re loving it and I can’t wait to show you what’s next. Thanks for being here. Xx

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Life is strange and I have been pulled in so many directions, but I always kept coming back to this. Music is in my veins and nothing else makes sense to me the way music makes sense.

After having my heartbroken and leaving the coast and city for the comfort and stillness of the mountains, I started to dive into my creativity again in a way that felt revitalizing. It offered a soothing salve for my heart and for my pride. During lockdown era I shared a few live videos and online concerts and the ball started rolling again for me. Performing over the past few years has lit me up inside and as I began touring again and writing more I realized that the only thing missing was a record.

During my 20’s I made a lot of shitty recordings - you can find most (definitely not all) of them here. In 2023 I put out a Patsy Cline cover tape with my east coast bestie Olivia Cayce, this one I don’t consider shitty at all, for the record, It’s a gem. I’m also really looking forward to sharing the collaboration I just did with Sarah Orton in Montréal, but I really don’t have a current body of work that represents where I am now as a solo artist.

I was awarded an arts grant this fall that kind of changed everything for me and put the plans into motion to make a record. I got the news while I was having tea with my friends and sort of just collapsed onto the ground and bawled my eyes out. Being recognized as an artist, and being offered a financial boost are both big ticket items for me.

I already had most of the songs before we started, but I did get the nagging sixth sense that there was one more ready to go if I paid enough attention. I wrote the final track of the album just a few days before tracking was set to start. It might be my best work. That or I always fall in love with the new one.

Two very dear friends of mine have built a beautiful little cabin outside of Rossland, BC and generously donated the space to the project. I can’t imagine a more fitting place for making music. We were tucked away on a mountainside next to a little creek, partially snowed in at the tail end of winter. It was dream-like.

I was very lucky to have Micah Erenberg of The Secret Beach agree to come all the way out from Saskatchewan to engineer the record. As if Micah isn’t brilliant enough, Kacy Lee Anderson came too which was the icing on the cake. Working alongside them both was life-changing and we made something incredible. And I can’t wait for you to hear it. And I think you’re going to love it. I hope you are anyway.

Across eight days we recorded nine tracks and have all kinds of talent on this record. Steve Brockley, Jill McKenna, Kacy, Dana Lee, Trevor Enns, Rena Vee, Chloe Davidson, Ryan Dutchak, my sis Charleigh Arnason, and there’s still one more musician joining the roster next week. I absolutely could not dream of a more easeful and serendipitous experience tracking. Good things are on the way, and I can’t wait to share them with you.

On day three or four Ryan spent the day with us just taking photos and video. On this particular day we also looked around the room and realized that all six of the people in the cabin were originally from the prairies - either Saskatchewan or Manitoba…it’s like we have magnets drawing us together to create.

Thanks for being here…more to come xo

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Writing with a keyboard on a screen is sort of unfamiliar territory for me. What do I say? Where do I start? I have started writing and stopped - only to start again -a few times, and find myself overwhelmed by the magnitude of information I want to convey. But this morning, as we’re approaching the eve of the first day of spring (what I have started to believe is the real new year),I finally decided to just dive in and write. So let’s see what happens.

I have always felt most expressive through writing. As a shy and barely verbal child I found immense delight and relief when I received my first diary for Christmas. I was five years old. I saw the look in my mom’s eyes when I unwrapped it, I didn’t exactly know what it meant but I got a feeling in my bones. I soon learned that this gift was an introduction to a whole new world that was only mine. This little book had a tiny lock and key, and because of that I was able to express myself in a way that felt easy and intuitive (and secretive). I hid the key from my siblings and felt that for the first time in my life I had something that was just for me.

Sometime around then I wrote my first song. It was a hit. I would jump up and down on my bed (the stage, obviously) singing it over and over. I wish I could remember it now, there is no doubt in my mind that it was inspired by my favourite song at the time I Will Always Love You.

The next Christmas I received a Talkgirl. The Talkgirl was the Talkboy “for girls”. The Talkboy seemed to have been made famous by Home Alone 2 - it was 1992 and it was trending.

My best friend and I recorded an entire album on cassette tape. Incredible satyrical songs and some covers redone in the style of Weird Al. I’m sure we made magic with the Talkgirl but those tapes have long since disappeared, so there is no record of them unfortunately.

Dear Diary-ing was a practice I continued through childhood and adolescence, a practice that I found therapeutic and comforting. I spent a lot of years of my youth a bit of a loner without many friends, and the pages of a pastel or spiralled Hilroy paired with any combination of colourful gel or fountain pens was my greatest treasure. I sometimes wrote to the pages as though they were my most trusted confidante, the only one who truly knew or understood me.

Other times it was a logbook, where I needed to record the events of each day in the exact order they occurred sparing no importantly detail.

Then I started to write poetry - which felt very cathartic as a pre-teen girl. It was the only way to express my all-encompassing emotions and the only place to admit to my hearts longing for the neighbourhood paper boy.

When my parents were going through a divorce I immersed myself in a fictional world of creatures who lived in a tree with an often dramatic and complex family dynamic. Each day I wrote a new chapter for this story, introducing complex characters into their mythical world. It was a microcosm of my creation where I had complete control and no limits to what was possible.

When I was in high school my creative writing teacher would take us to the nearby graveyard, or sand dune, or have us lying upside down in the hallway - shaking up our brains and encouraging us to not only think but feel when we write. She would have us listen intently to Leonard Cohen or The Beatles and then we would dissect each song for the rest of class. I loved these exercises in perception and understanding the playfulness of creative expression of language, and it informed my songwriting.

I took a classical guitar class in the ninth grade, and as soon as I could play two chords I started writing songs on guitar. It opened another door in my consciousness and from then on I have been writing songs on guitar. To be honest I haven’t really advanced much as a guitar player, I sort of just learned enough to accompany myself. My focus was and continues to be the lyrics, the story, and how I deliver them vocally. I love to play with phrasing, and to challenge my voice to see how I can bend and twist the words and their meanings, dancing and weaving through them with notes and space and air. Songwriting has become my favourite art form - one that I have carried with me well into my adult life.

Although I have always been creative, I am choosing creativity in a more dedicated way than ever before. I feel like art is honesty, vulnerability and innately human, and we need it now maybe more than ever.

With love - thanks for being here with me. xx

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