Jenn Grant

Juno-nominated singer/songwriter Jenn Grant emerged with a distinctly lyrical, folk-minded pop in the mid-2000s before edging toward a more exploratory indie pop/rock with her third album, 2011′s Honeymoon Punch. Her first of many collaborations with her husband, producer Daniel Ledwell, it earned Grant her first Juno nomination. She continued to explore lusher sounds, including brushes with psychedelia on subsequent releases, such as the Juno-nominated Compostela from 2014. Born on Prince Edward Island and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia from the age of ten, Jenn Grant went on to study painting at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, all the while writing songs and performing. By the time she completed her B.F.A. in 2006, she had self-released an EP (2005′s Jenn Grant and Goodbye Twentieth Century) and opened a local show for Feist. The EP caught the attention of Paris 1919 Records, which released her full-length debut, Orchestra for the Moon, in 2007. The album featured collaborations with a number of Canadian pop luminaries like Ron Sexsmith, Jill Barber, and the Heavy Blinkers. Her like-minded, mostly acoustic sophomore LP, 2009′s Echoes, was recorded on a farm in rural Ontario and released by Six Shooter Records. She followed it a year later with the Songs of Siigoun EP. Named in honor of her fiancé’s newborn niece, it included a cover of John Denver’s “Annie’s Song.” Arriving in 2011, the critically lauded Honeymoon Punch represented a stylistic shift into more experimental indie rock territory, and was nominated for a Juno Award as well as making the longlist for the Polaris Music Prize. She and the album’s producer, Daniel Ledwell, married, and the couple collaborated again on the lusher The Beautiful Wild, released in 2012. It earned Grant an East Coast Music Award for Pop Recording of the Year in 2013. The following year brought both the Clairvoyant EP and her ambitious fifth album, Compostela, which introduced psychedelic elements into her sound through collaborations with Sexsmith, Buck 65, Doug Paisley, and others. The record earned her two Juno nominations, one for songwriting and one for Adult Alternative Album of the Year. She and Ledwell joined forces again on 2017′s Paradise, this time incorporating elements of folk, soul, and symphonic rock into some of the tracks. ~ Marcy Donelson & Tim Monger