When We Wake with Andrew Shaver

My guest today is singer-songwriter Lucy Clearwater, whose debut full-length album is called People Not Possessions. It's a title that tells you quite a bit about who she is before you even hear a note.

Lucy started playing violin at the age of 4 and by the time she was 12 she was teaching the instrument. Then she started writing songs on guitar, and she hasn't looked back.

Lucy grew up in the Bay Area, moved to LA, and spent some time in Berlin. She even learned enough German to write and record an entire album in...

Tyson Ray Borsboom is one of those songwriters who seems decidedly less interested in polishing the edges than he is in just telling the truth.

Born in Winnipeg, shaped by Alberta - Lethbridge then Calgary - he’s now living out on the West Coast in Vancouver (at last, for the time being). His thoughtful blend of country, folk, and Americana feels built for long drives, which he’s done his fair share of driving trucks, and late-night reflection, which, quite frankly, with a couple kids at home, I’m rather partial to.

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You could say that Kelly McMichael took the long way round to using her own name. Born in Peterborough, Ontario and now based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, she spent years making music under different monikers and inside other people’s bands, touring with artists like Sarah Harmer, Gentleman Reg, The Hidden Cameras and The Burning Hell.

Along the way she made her own music as Rouge and then Renders, before eventually stepping forward using her name with her Polaris Prize shortlisted debut album Waves, and its Music NL award winning (and Polaris Prize longlisted) follow-up After the...

My guest today is one of those musicians other musicians talk about. Christine Bougie is widely considered one of Canada’s finest guitarists. She's a sought-after collaborator who’s spent years helping shape the sound of other artists’ songs on stages and records across the country. We’re talking Bahamas, Sarah Harmer, Jenn Grant, Amy Millan, Matt Anderson…and, trust me, the list goes on.

But she’s also an artist with a singular voice of her own, and her new album, How to Care for  Introverts, brings that voice front and centre. The record is built around the ex...

My guest today is one of Nova Scotia’s finest songwriters, and one-time touring bass player for Stompin Tom Connors, Pictou County’s Dave Gunning.

His new album Field Notes wasn’t recorded in a traditional studio at all. It was captured outdoors in Australia, under a gumtree, with one microphone on Dave and two more pointed at the birds (kookaburras?). No isolation booths. No endless second-guessing. Just voice, guitar, and whatever the day decided to offer.

On one track, Angels' Share, a bird chirps perfectly in key during the instrumental and stops as Dave starts...

I met Rebekah Hawker this past January at Folk Alliance in New Orleans and within minutes we were laughing like we’d known each other for years.

What starts as a conversation about surviving conference adrenaline, and then inevitable crash that follows, turns into something much deeper. We talk about growing up in a church community, about the grief she felt after her mom passed away, moving back in with dad on the family farm, journaling and building an inner world as an artist.

And Rebekah shares the story be...

My guests today are Tim Chaisson and Jake Charron from the genre-bending, Juno Award-winning, musical trailblazers from Prince Edward Island, The East Pointers.

Their new album, Schoonertown, is rooted friendships that stretch decades, small-town life, and the long road of making music together. It’s also shaped by loss. The record carries the presence of their late bandmate and friend Koady Chaisson, who was also Tim’s cousin, and whose spirit is felt all the way through these songs.

What’s striking is that Schoonertown isn’t a quiet record. It’s joyful, rh...

On today’s episode of When We Wake, I’m talking with Eric Duquette and Jena GoGo AKA Duke and Goldie - a duo whose entire story basically starts with a Craigslist ad in Toronto.

Jena put out a call for a guitar player and, perhaps unsurprisingly, a whole host of guys answered, but it was Eric who fit the bill.

So the two bonded over a shared love of Motown and Radiohead, played in a band together, fell in love, fell out of that earlier band and eventually spun all of it into Duke and...

Boy Golden is the oh-so-cool Rock’n'Roll alter ego of the Winnipeg-based multi-instrumentalist/producer/songwriter extraordinaire, Liam Duncan. In today’s chat, we get into the origin story of that alter ego, but before we do that, we chat about the music.

We kick it off talking about Suffer, the lead single from his forthcoming album Best of Our Possible Lives (due in February 2026). The song went all the way to #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Charts in Canada. But didja know, it hit #1 weeks before it was announced at #1? Naturally, we get into the...

Jill Barber is back with a brand-new holiday album, A Holly Jolly Jill Barber Christmas. An album that includes a handful of the classics you’d expect, some lesser known treasures and a couple of originals, all of it shaped alongside her Grammy-nominated producer and pal Drew Jurecka.

Jill’s been living in a Christmas mindset, replete with its bittersweet mix of nostalgia and hope, since February. So it’s high time she hit the road to bring her special brand of holiday cheer to folks from Toronto, east.

Three time Music Nova Scotia Award winner, Daniel James McFadyen grew up outside of Toronto chasing a ball, not a melody. But somewhere between the rec centre squash courts and the dark and dreary corners of the pubs filled with folk covers, music found him.

His new album, Back to the Country,  was written in a cabin on the east coast and recorded in a cabin cum recording studio on the west coast. It’s raw, nostalgic, and wide open.

Like the places that shaped it.

Charlotte Cornfield is one of those songwriters who can make a small moment feel like a revelation.  And speaking of revelations, while I’ve been a fan of Charlotte’s for almost a decade now, going all the way back to her 2106 debut Future Snowbird, in our chat, I learned that Charlotte knew of me years before that even. 

You can imagine my surprise.

I guess, I used to be somebody, you know?

Nah.

Turns out, Charlotte and I have more than a couple handfuls of mutual friends form our shared time i...

Yukon Blonde has been part of Canada’s indie rock landscape for more than a decade.

They're JUNO-nominated, they've picked up a SOCAN award, they've had tunes placed in shows like Grey’s Anatomy and The Summer I Turned Pretty, they’ve hit the Top 10 at commercial alt radio, and had #1s on the CBC Music Top 20.

Not too shabby.

And they don’t just write great songs. As anyone who has seen them live knows, they are electric , even if they wrote most of their new album on acoustics.

On today's...

He grew up wanting to be an inventor. Turns out he is.

Jake Nicoll builds the places and the tools he records with right down to the microphones, compressors, and the bits in between.  He moved to Newfoundland with his twin brother and one of his sisters for university and to make music, and he never stopped tinkering. 

When the pandemic hit, he went to his family farm in Guelph ON for what he thought would be two weeks. It became a year and a half of sustenance farming with Dad.

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A sense of home is at the heart of Ewan Currie’s songwriting, and after a lifetime of moving around, he’s landed on the East Coast, kinda like me.

But, I’ll put my cards on the table and admit that, ok, sure, folks might be a little more excited by his move than mine. I get it.

Ewan Currie is the frontman of one of Canada’s favourite Rock'n'Roll bands, The Sheepdogs, who, of course, were thrust into the spotlight in 2011 after winning Rolling Stone’s "Do You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star?" con...

My guest on this episode is singer-songwriter Breagh Isabel.

From her Halifax home and basement studio, Breagh divvies up her work week co-writing with songwriters all over the world, writing music for kids' TV shows, producing for other artists, and, somehow, still finding the time to write for herself. Though, as you’ll hear in our chat today, sometimes the songs she writes for herself, are the ones left to linger forgotten on an old hard drive.

I had the pleasure of meeting Breagh earlier this summer when she came to lay do...

Leanne Hoffman's latest album, The Text Collector, started as a personal experiment: write a poem every day for a year. From that mountain of words came a record that’s pop-forward, poetry-laced, and emotionally razor-sharp.

We talk about how seeing St. Vincent live in 2018 completely changed how she thought about performance — and how wild it is that she’s now opening for her at the Halifax Jazz Festival.

We also get into her journey from student of the sciences to full-time artist, her longtime collaboration with producer Erin Costelo, and what it’s like to walk tha...

It’s always a gift to sit down with a great artist — and even more so when that artist is an old friend.

Sarah Harmer is one of Canada’s most beloved songwriters, known for crafting songs that are intimate and expansive all at once. From her early days fronting one of my favourite 90’s bands  Weeping Tile, to solo albums like her debut You Were Here and  her most recent Are You Gone, her music has long been a reflection of both inner life and the natural world around us.

She’s also a passionate e...

Suzie Ungerleider has long been one of Canada’s most evocative songwriters — though for years, we’ve known her as Oh Susanna. These days, she’s releasing music under her own name, and she says it feels right — she says it feels like she’s stripped herself of a costume she’d been wearing.

Her new album, Among the Evergreens, written mostly while walking forest trails near her home in Vancouver, is her most personal yet. Suzie calls the songs chapters in her life — stretching from her own wild teenage years to now, raising a teenage daught...

Alexander Gallant is one of the sharpest, most honest songwriters I know. His new album Rubber Monster Suit is funny, it’s sad, it’s weird, it’s beautiful - kinda like Alex - and it picks up where his 2023 debut, Waiting Table Blues, left off. 

Waiting Table Blues was a stripped down and deeply honest record written in the early days of his sobriety. Rubber Monster Suit is still intimate and personal, but the album feels bigger in scope. It’s got flashes of psych county, jazz, cinematic folk, and, of course, the trademark wit and lyricism...

In this episode I chat with Dartmouth, Nova Scotia’s Mo Kenney.

Now, I say Dartmouth because that’s where Mo lives and that’s where I met them, but as you’ll hear in our chat, Mo is actually from, as they put it, somewhere just outside of Nowhere, Nova Scotia.

Something they made abundantly clear by the title of their most recent album, their 5th, From Nowhere.

Before moving to the big bad city at 11, and learning to play the guitar at the Cons...

Dan Mangan is one of Canada’s most beloved singer-songwriters - a moniker he’s newly embracing. So much so, in fact, that he considered calling his new album Schminger Schmongwriter - a nod to Harry Nilsson’s classic 1971 LP Nilsson Schmilsson.

In the end, Dan went with Natural Light as an album title, and as you’ll hear in our chat, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours as an album reference, in that, he calls Natural Light his Rumours, AKA a modern classic.

And why not. The album is a thing of b...

Braden Lam released his debut full length The Cloudmaker’s Cry on April 11, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it is terrific. 

Prior to the album, Braden released a couple EPs and a handful of singles to much acclaim - he’s been nominated for a bundle of awards, including several East Coast Music Awards, not the least of which was Songwriter of the Year. 

Now, look, I don’t have a crystal ball in front of me, but I’m seeing some good things in store for this collection of tunes. And, as yo...

Joel Plaskett just turned 50.

In celebration of this momentous occasion, his long time manager and friend, Sheri Jones, quietly asked dozens of his musical pals to contribute a cover of one of Joel’s songs to an album she was compiling as a surprise birthday gift. 

And, boy oh boy, did these friends heed the call. 

The album, Songs From the Gang: A Celebration of Joel Plaskett, released April 11, a week before Joel’s big day, and features the likes of Sloan...

Julian Taylor is a Toronto based singer-songwriter and radio host extraordinaire.

He has been making music for over 30 years now. Speaking of 30, he's also managed to syndicate his radio show, the Julian Taylor Jukebox, on over 30 stations across North America. 

Julian had a brush with major label stardom in the early oughts with his band Staggered Crossing, after which he went independent, and has been ever since. His most recent album, Pathways, earned Julian his 4th Juno nomination.

He is terrific songwriter and, as y...

On today’s episode, I chat with St. John’s, Newfoundland’s Nico Paulo.   

Nico Paulo is a gem in the crown of Canadian songwriting. Her debut, self-tilted, album came out in April of 2023 on Halifax’s Forward Music Group to rave reviews, including this beauty from MTV: “your new favourite vocalist lives in Newfoundland.” 

She sure does.

Although, Nico didn’t always call Newfoundland home. She was born in Toronto to Portuguese parents. But, by the time she was two, they’d moved back to Portugal. Nico fo...

Kylie Fox is a singer-songwriter based in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Her latest album Sequoia was recorded in producer Daniel Ledwell’s idyllic lakeside studio just outside of Halifax.

The album is a terrific mix of tunes that runs the gamut stylistically: it’s jazzy at times, it’s folky at times, it’s a little like Sesame Street at times. And we get into that in our chat - what it was like for Kylie in the middle of a recording session to have her producer turn to her and say, you know what this reminds me of? Big...

On today’s episode, I chat with the pride of (or, at least, one of the prides of) Prince Edward Island, Lennie Gallant. 

Lennie Gallant is not only a member of the Order of Canada, but he's also had a song (Peter's Dream) inducted into the Canadian Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. My goodness, he’s almost royalty. 

Speaking of which, in our chat, we talk about the origin of his last name, which has something to do with his great, great, great, great, (great?) grandfather and a discussion that he...

With a family heritage that goes back to the early 18th century in Witless Bay, Newfoundland, Con O’Brien is one of the province’s great musical treasures.

He is the only remaining original member in The Irish Descendants, a band that was at the heart of bringing the traditional music of Newfoundland to the rest of Canada and, indeed, the world.

The Irish Descendants are celebrating 35 years of bringing their impeccable musicianship and vocal prowess to the adoring masses. Along the way, they’ve garnered a couple Gold albums...

Mike O’Brien grew up loving the process of writing a song. Or, as we find out in this chat, what he prefers to call making up a song.

He began his career in Toronto at the turn-of-the-century playing with his high schools pals, one of whom was Afie Jurvanen. Mike and Afie would go on to form the band Paso Mino, which became a go-to backing band in the early oughts Toronto indie rock scene, most notably for Jason Collett. 

As we get into in today’s chat, when...

James Clayton (aka Clay Pigeon) is a terrific songwriter, living in Montreal these days. He’s originally from Peterborough, Ontario, he went to a jazz school out in Nelson BC, and he cut his teeth at open mic nights in Berlin.

Early in the Pandemic, he and his now wife Tosca, decided they wanted to come back to Canada. James had seen a documentary on the Montreal music scene and thought, uh, yeah, that seems like the place to be, let’s go to Montreal.

So they did.

Gatineau, Quebec's Mia Kelly is an exciting recent addition to the Folk and Americana scene in Canada.

Two albums in, she’s shared the stage with the likes of Jeremie Albino, Julian Taylor, The Franklin Electric, and, previous When We Wake guest, Aysanabee.

She’s also taken home two pieces of hardware at the Canadian Folk Music Awards, and, between you and me, I suspect there’s a few more coming.

Her latest release, her second full length album, is entitled To Be Clear. And to be clear, it’s a beautiful collection of songs...

On today's episode, I chat with the Big Turnip himself, Dylan Jewers.

Born and raised in Dartmouth Nova Scotia, young Dylan was sure of two things: his love of Micheal Jordan, and the fact that, under no circumstances, would adult Dylan have a job working for anyone else.

To his credit, and the edification of other likeminded youngens, with the exception of the odd job slinging beers at music venues, Dylan has made good on his young self's promise, and worked for (and in a lot of ways by...

Lisa Haller enjoyed a homecoming in 2022 when she took over as Director of Programming at the Atlantic International Film Festival, in Halifax. She had spent the previous 15 years honing her game at film festivals across North America, including; the Whistler Film Festival, Aspen Film, and TIFF in Toronto.

In our chat, we discuss the festival's opening night film, Jason Buxton's hotly anticipated Sharp Corner (which...I juuuust so happen to be in), Mike Downie's 4 part deep dive documentary about his late brother's band The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal, the exciting return of Festival...

With 10 albums under his belt, including an album entirely written for a stage musical, another in collaboration with his sister Jill Barber, a couple Juno nominations, a handful of Canadian Folk Music Award nominations, and multiple songs placed in TV shows and films, Matthew Barber is one of Canada's most respected contemporary songwriters. I have known Matt for so many years now that I have spent more time in my life knowing him than I have spent not knowing him. He's in a rarified class of people in my life. Outside of my family, he's the guy who has known...

Trombonist, radio show host, and Artistic Director of the TD Halifax Jazz Festival, Andrew Jackson, is coming off a monster year at the Music Nova Scotia Awards. They saw him taking home the honours in 3 categories: Jazz Album of the Year for New Doors, his collaboration with guitarist Sam Wilson; the Media Arts Award for his work on his long running radio program The Outer Edge on Dalhousie University's CKDU; and perhaps the biggest of them all, Musician of the Year.

I chatted with him as he rounded the corner into the home stretch...

Joel Gregorio lives in Toronto.

He is an incredible designer and graphic artist. He's the founder of State Goods, which, as he puts it, is an evolving art study in nostalgia, memories, and connection.

I have had the terrifically good fortune of working with Joel on both of the Clever Hopes albums. If you have a look, on whatever your streamer of choice is, under Clever Hopes, what you'll see is Joel's work. He designed all the singles art, the thumbnails, the album covers. He also Art Directed the...

Eva Foote was born in Louisiana, but she moved away with her family as a kid and grew up in Edmonton. She still thinks a lot about Louisiana and what it means to her - what home means to her. 

Is Edmonton home? Is Louisiana home? Is Toronto home? Vancouver? Is it Berlin? Or, is it, maybe all of them?

We talk about the life of an artist on the road, and that feeling of never really landing anywhere to stay, because by the time you arrive, you’re alr...

Kyle Cunjak is a musician, photographer, and, as we’ll come to find out, an avid surfing enthusiast. He loves surfing the Atlantic so much so that he can’t even really imagine leaving Nova Scotia. I’d say that’s definition enthusiast.

Originally from Fredericton NB, he now calls Halifax home. He’s a terrifically in demand bass player, playing with the likes of David MyIes, Jenn Grant, Wolf Castle, and so many more. I had the great good fortune of having Kyle play bass on my most recent Clever Hopes album, New Kind of Fa...

Originally from New Brunswick, Joe Grass is a multi-instrumentalist producer and songwriter now based in Montreal.

Over the past 15 years, I’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with Joe on a handful of projects, including a few pieces of theatre and, now, a couple of albums. 

I release music as Clever Hopes and Joe has played electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and the pedal steel on both of my albums - he even sang a little in french on Artefact. Chances are if you’ve heard any of the tunes and t...