There’s a kind of clarity you don’t get in the moment. It shows up later, after you’ve lived with the mess long enough that it stops feeling like a story you’re obligated to tell and starts feeling like something you can finally name.
That’s where Jenn Grant seems to be on Queen of the Strait, her eighth studio album — a record that circles back to the things that made her, whether she wanted them to or not: growing up split between PEI and Nova Scotia after her parents separated, losing her mother, carrying the strange double-weight of love and grief. Co-produced with longtime collaborator Daniel Ledwell and Joshua Van Tassel, it arrived March 6, and she’s out touring it now as part of Cradled by the Waves, an immersive live show built around the album.
“Now that I am a woman and an artist in midlife, with two young kids, I feel the presence of time and the opportunity to leave behind words,” Grant says. “These are the most honest words I’ve shared, coming from a life that was mixed with both magic and heartbreak. I’m writing these songs from a place where I am what these memories made me. I am beyond these stories now. They are in my blood and I am stronger for them.”
That “beyond it, but still marked by it” feeling is all over the record. Grant talks about the album as both her most direct and her most poetic — which sounds like a contradiction until you remember how often the plainest language can hit the hardest when you don’t over-explain it.
“I think being literal in songwriting can be tricky,” she says. “It can be too much sometimes. But I think if you can leave a space for the listener’s mind to imagine, then you’ve got it in the pocket. Hopefully I have done this.”
The title comes from the MV Abegweit, the ferry that used to cross the Northumberland Strait between PEI and Nova Scotia — the route Grant and her brother took back and forth between their parents. Abegweit is an anglicized version of the Mi’kmaw word Epekwitk, meaning “cradled by the waves,” and once you know that, the phrase starts popping up everywhere: not just as an image, but as a way of moving through the album, of being carried and jolted and returned.
For Grant, grounding the record in that geography — and acknowledging the Indigenous history embedded in it — isn’t decorative. She speaks about it like a responsibility.
“I feel very keen to honour the elders and land that I came to live on as a white settler,” she says. “This is something I will continue to work to recognize and reconcile.”
The emotional centre of the album is Jim Cuddy Dress, a tribute to Grant’s late mother that she wrote in a single session with Ken Yates. It has that immediate feeling of inevitability, like it existed before the song did — intimate, but not precious about it. Grant describes her favourite kind of songwriting as the kind where the writer’s own presence in the room shapes what the song becomes.
“My favourite form of songwriting is when the person writing informs the song in the way that makes you tell them the story that becomes the lyrics,” she says.
Even then, the song didn’t fully click into place until later, sitting on a cottage porch with Ledwell.
“He was playing a new guitar rhythm underneath. This pattern is something I became obsessed with and made a huge difference for me. That’s when I knew the song was finished.”
She was careful about what made it onto the album at all. Asked if any material felt too personal to release, she doesn’t hedge.
“I didn’t try to write anything that I wasn’t ready for. I was ready for everything here,” Grant says. “I think the songs that were included on the album are the ones that were the most honest. I don’t even remember the others anymore.”
The way it was recorded matches that mindset. The band set up at Grant’s home studio in Lake Echo, Nova Scotia, and tracked the record live off the floor, no headphones, over four days. Christine Bougie, Kyle Cunjak, and Kim Harris were part of the lineup (Harris’ vocals came later), and Van Tassel and Ledwell brought charts, meaning a lot of the musicians were meeting these songs for the first time in the room, in real time.
“We just had such amazing musicians in the room,” Grant says. “The feel in the room was just so good. I loved making the album this way. We called it ‘adult music’ or something. No AI needed. Just real people listening to each other. It was incredible for me.”
That skepticism toward the usual industry pipeline shows up elsewhere too. Grant chose not to put Queen of the Strait on Spotify at first, instead releasing it on Bandcamp for two weeks before any streaming rollout — a move that’s still unusual enough to get people whispering, which tells you everything you need to know about the state of things.
“This was such a good decision as an indie artist to receive the support off the top from actual sales,” she says. “I will do this again. Highly recommend.”
Her reasons for holding Spotify at arm’s length aren’t framed as a stunt. She talks about it as a values question — one she’s tired of dodging.
“At this stage in my life, I just can’t justify having an album on Spotify,” Grant says. “Spotify pays their artists the least and has supported ICE and AI military weapons and AI music. I can’t be a part of that. The album is beautiful in and out and deserves to be listened to and doesn’t belong on a platform such as that.”
The world around the record is just as considered. Cradled by the Waves folds film, interpretive movement, and live performance into one piece, co-created with Irish director Julie Kelleher, projectionist Jose Garcia-Lozano, cinematographer Daniel Grant, lighting designer Rebecca Picherack, and poet and songwriter Tanya Davis as movement artist. It was developed over a year with support from the National Arts Centre’s National Creation Fund — the kind of slow-build timeline you rarely hear about anymore unless someone fought for it.
“I am interested in art in many mediums, and I wanted the show to be something different and even serve a purpose for the world,” Grant says. “Live music is an act of resistance in itself, but I hoped there might be more I could share by making this a more theatrical and inclusive performance. It’s a fun and exciting challenge to do this and if there is no risk in art I am not sure it’s worth doing.”
Ledwell is her husband as well as her collaborator, and she talks about the overlap with a mix of affection and practicality — like someone who’s had to figure out how to protect the relationship and the work at the same time.
“I have made many albums with Dan, and it’s something we love to do,” she says. “We both love recording and writing together and I really respect his level of genius in music.”
She speaks just as warmly about Van Tassel.
“Queen of the Strait was co-produced by two geniuses, Dan and Joshua Van Tassel,” Grant says. “I adore them both and am often amazed at the talent so close to me. They both brought such unique things to the table and I was honoured to create this with them alongside the band. This album is a testament to the work ethic and talent of those five people.”
The tour hits Montreal on April 15 at Théâtre Fairmount, and she sounds genuinely happy to be coming back.
“I have always loved playing in Montreal and knowing each city has a bit of a different feel, I feel Montreal feels a bit more ‘je ne sais pas, un peu chique peut être?’ A little bit cool in a fun and cute way. Sometimes I try to speak French and I have found them to be very forgiving and kind.”
On Queen of the Strait, Grant returns to the events that shaped her without smoothing them down or turning them into neat resolutions. The songs stay close to the specifics — the crossings, the family split, the grief — and she gives them room to sit there.
“I’ve seen my life full of gifts and privilege as well as commonly shared experiences we all know of loss, heartbreak, abuse,” she says. “It’s all in there and meant to be for the listener to hear their own stories and grow.”
Photos – DeeDee Morris & Daniel Ledwell
Share this :
