♪ Valerie: Welcome to Canada Files .

I'm Valerie Pringle.

My guest today is Jann Arden.

She's a singer-songwriter who's produced 16 albums.

Including a new one this year.

She's in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

Jann has also written six books, including her memoirs.

As well as a novel.

She's starred in her own sitcom and has a podcast.

She says she's living proof that good things come from bad things.

>> Valerie: Hi Jann.

>> Jann: Valerie!

>> Holey moley.

We were just sitting here talking about the good old days, which are still happening.

>> Well, I know.

Because I was going to ask you, when I was first talking to you, you were a singer-songwriter.

You've done that for decades.

Then you're a writer: non-fiction, fiction, an actor, a podcaster.

Have you figured out what drives this need for self-expression?

Or is it just because you're an artist?

>> Not to be too esoteric about it but I just love doing stuff.

And I'm not particularly concerned if I suck!

I think it's really important and like you said, creative people create.

But I just want my hand in every honeypot.

I love doing it.

I work with great people that encourage me.

My mom said to me when I was a kid, "Jannie, you do not have to be a great writer to tell a great story."

And that really stuck with me as a teenager.

I've always felt that way about my songwriting as well, Valerie.

>> So but just to think of the things that you've tried and been brave about.

Are you not afraid of failure?

>> No.

I fail more than I succeed, that's for sure.

I mean I'm getting better now.

But I think when I was younger, I was kind of a loose cannon.

Just was like a wrecking ball going through life.

Not very focused.

But I was drinking and being young.

I had a few hits, I'm on a bus and careening around the planet.

With Insensitive .

Which is just 30 years old, by the way.

31 years old!

When I got older and there was grace in that.

And you know that, as you get older.

I just thought I'm going to focus on the things that I like to do.

And they're all connected when you think about it.

Writing non-fiction and fiction is still a type of storytelling.

You know, writing music very much lends itself to that genre as well.

Podcasting is talking.

I work with two young women.

They're hilariously funny.

They have a very different take on the world than me.

But I just really like it.

And I like being busy.

>> One of your great lines is that "Good things can come from bad things."

Which you attribute really, your career to.

The fact that you were kind of hiding from a mean, scary, alcoholic dad.

>> Yeah.

He was very unpredictable.

And when you're nine years old, alcoholism is-- you don't understand what's happening to an adult.

My mom, I'd catch her crying in the sewing room.

And she didn't really want to talk about it.

But I didn't have the emotional capacity to help her.

I think about that.

But I just knew to stay out of his way.

He was drunk enough one day to let me and my little brother join the Columbia Record Club.

If you're a certain age, you remember the Columbia Record Club.

We had these albums show up every month and I was just in heaven.

I learned to play Mom's guitar by ear.

Pretty much from the word GO, I was making up songs.

I wrote songs down there, hundreds of terrible songs until I was 18.

No-one knew I was singing and playing guitar.

>> Were you Karen Carpenter to begin with?

>> I wish!

(laughing) I think I was quite terrible but I copied Bette Midler & Streisand.

I copied Carly Simon and Janis Ian.

I just took painstaking time to every syllable.

I just learned that way.

I still, to this day, don't read music.

But yeah, I'd just written all these zany songs.

When I was eighteen, I finally kind of broke it to my mom.

I said, "Listen, I'm singing a song at my high school grad."

You're what?

( laughing ) I didn't even know you liked music.

>> Tell me about your voice.

You say you don't read music.

You played in the basement.

Trained yourself.

It's so distinctive.

Do you take care of it?

Did it just spring that way?

Were you just lucky to have that voice?

>> I think I started out pretty whiney.

But like I said, I just copied people.

When I started writing my own music, I didn't have anyone to copy.

I had to go off on my own.

I had to go march up that mountain on my own.

Because I'm singing words that nobody could show me how to do it.

But I don't know.

I don't really do warm-ups.

I have not lost my voice very many times in my life.

I'm a pretty rugged, sturdy vocalist when it comes to that.

I don't do a lot of fancy trills or have a lot of tricks.

I think I'm very pedestrian.

Karen Carpenter was my idol.

I mean that in a way where I sing the song, I don't go off into some unknown place.

You'll hear a lot of young singers.

I'm not going to name names but I heard this one particular girl who's very famous do Silent Night .

It took me 3/4 of the song to figure out what song she was singing.

Because it was like that ♪ eeeaaahhhuh ♪ I a) don't have the chops for it.

I learned from Bette Midler and Carly and just really solid singer-songwriters.

So I don't think about it much.

I like my voice.

I think it is recognizable.

I think that's been really good for me in my career.

That if you hear a line, you know it's me.

>> So after you shocked them at graduation, your mom-- and there was some inclination that maybe you could do this, basically though said not oh forget it, but why not you?

Which is, I think, a great thing to say.

Why not?

>> I think they were really scared.

Dad and I would lay in bed and wonder what in the heck you'd get up to.

I left home finally at 20.

I was like a 14 year-old 20 year-old.

I was so naive.

I left my mom crying in the driveway.

I really learned.

I went out to Vancouver.

And was busking in the streets.

Thinking that this is how you break into music.

I was so naive.

But having said that, I was in bar bands in Dawson, Yellowknife Whitehorse, Smithers and going through the interior of BC.

But it was such a learning ground.

Which I don't think young people do anymore.

It's like you go into a contest or you-- >> You go on YouTube or TikTok.

>> And you have these 15-second phenomena of things that are streamed a billion times--blah, blah, blah.

And that's all fine because the world changes.

It changes how we absorb new artists.

But I think--yeah, I'm glad for those really dark... >> And they were really dark years in Vancouver too.

You said just a spiral of-- >> Drinking, promiscuous.

I always worried.

Oh my gosh, if my mom could see me now.

>> But there are a couple of stories that are-- you were busking and somebody... >> In Gastown.

>> Somebody came up to you?

>> Well, I had about $4 in my case.

I even know the little enclave where I was busking.

It's still there.

But I was just playing away, probably some beat-up song.

I got punched.

They just wanted the money in my case.

Excuse me.

I'm so grateful that he didn't take my guitar.

My guitar was there.

But he did knock me out--not long.

But just enough to really hurt my cheek and eye socket.

My head was black and blue.

Green!

I was embarrassed.

I didn't have any money to get home to North Vancouver on the C-bus so I snuck on.

Through some miracle, I didn't get caught.

But good things come out of bad things.

It didn't deter me.

I thought maybe this isn't for me.

>> Why didn't you give up?

>> I didn't know what else to do.

And I just kept going back to it.

It's like that moth to the flame.

I really liked it and I think, if I'm honest with myself, I wasn't really trying to get anywhere.

I just really liked doing it.

My mom cut me out a little ad in the paper.

I'd been at home for 3-4 months, kind of licking my wounds.

It was for a wedding singer and I got the job in this band.

Then Neil MacGonigill started following me around.

He was the first kind of manager I started working with.

That would have been mid-80s, like 87-88.

He said, "I think I can get you a record deal."

We just worked and worked.

We were turned down by everybody dozens of times!

>> You say... >> Too high, too low.

>> A great selection of rejection letters.

>> The best!

I still have some.

You used to actually get letters from-- it's not for us, you're too depressing.

I don't know.

It didn't deter me.

I mean at the very end, when we got turned down for the last time, which I thought was the last time.

Allan Reid, he is still a friend of mine all these years later.

But he got my cassette, and he was a fellow that was turned onto us by a guy named Chappell.

He's like, "Allan, listen to this.

I can't do anything with it right now.

But maybe you'll hear something."

Well, he listened to it in his car.

He's like, "I don't get it."

And that was when I was almost 30.

I thought I have to do something.

I'm so broke.

My parents are just like over it.

I'm always borrowing money from them.

Luckily for me, his fiancé broke up with him.

When he came back to work, a week later after licking his wounds.

Good things come out of bad things.

It was his bad thing.

He got into his car and a song, I Just Don't Love You Anymore, was the song that came up on the cassette.

He pulled over to a gas station or something and said, "I don't know if you'll ever sell a record but I get it."

>> "I get what you do."

>> And you got a record deal.

>> This with the same company for over 32 years now.

>> When they said that to you, you said you cried.

>> I did.

I walked down the street.

I just had kind of-- I didn't cry out loud.

I just--I was in disbelief.

>> What kind of career did you think you'd have?

>> I wanted to be a schoolteacher.

>> But even as a singer.

Once you got signed.

Especially when you had big success with Insensitive .

>> Did you think, I'm going to be Celine Dion?

>> No, I was quite frightened of it.

It was a really daunting experience.

My management company was very ill-equipped.

We were just zinging around the world.

I didn't really have a band to support me.

I was just playing my old Martin Good guitar.

It was unorganized.

Money was going this, that, the other way.

I was doing Letterman, Leno, Today Show, Good Morning America.

The little glimmer of success that I had in the US, 1994.

Trust me when I tell you.

When you're looking at David Letterman and those eyebrows in his cold studio, I was just in disbelief.

I don't think I had a chance to enjoy it.

Because it was chaos-- like I said, unorganized.

They were ill-prepared.

When it happens and it hits, if the infrastructure isn't there, it can be really difficult.

I didn't last long.

I actually severed that relationship.

So I had my own management company for a decade.

And just kind of muddled through.

I did as little as possible and worked when I needed to.

I was never focused.

And then Bruce Allan got involved.

He flew to Calgary.

We had dinner at a little place.

He sat across from me and said, "You're not manageable!"

"You don't listen and you gotta listen!"

He said, "You could do so much more than you do."

"And you still have time."

It just kind of shook me.

He said, "The record you just worked on is crappy."

"It's terrible.

You need to start again."

It was a cover record.

It was one of my Uncover Me series.

I did a few of them.

And we went back to the drawing board.

The record was a great success!

I had a hit song with At Seventeen off that record.

>> Good old Janis Ian.

>> Yah, I sent her a plaque.

Saying yah Janis, you've got a hit song in Canada again.

I've been with Bruce ever since.

It's funny.

There's no straight path.

To where you're going to go in the arts.

There just isn't.

>> Do you think it's harder for women?

>> I did have one guy, the president of the company.

Very famous story.

This says much more about my mother than him.

I'm at a party in Los Angeles.

It's a big publishing party.

All these famous people.

Anyway, the president of A&M literally, in a very earnest nice way, said, "I'll drop a bunch of you guys home.

I've got a stretch limo."

He dropped everybody off.

I was the last person out of the car.

I was staying at the Roosevelt Hotel.

As I'm getting out, this huge man, sucking on a cigar drinking a cognac, says to me, "Jan, you're 30 lbs away from superstardom in this country."

I ran into my hotel and phoned my mom, collect.

She said "Well, why didn't you tell him you didn't want to gain any more weight."

(laughing) << And that was my mom.

She just was very...

I dunno, just very normal.

She was very sensible.

"Why not you?"

"You're as good as Ann Murray", she'd say to me.

>> Good Mother has wonderful lines in it.

But the refrain, "Be yourself, be yourself".

How long did it take you to come to that?

>> I feel like I always was myself.

I...my parents were so fair with me.

>> Jann: They were scared but they were supportive.

And they kind of had that can-do spirit.

Well, you can do anything you set your mind to.

>> Valerie: Who writes a song about good mothers and good fathers?

>> I thought it was stupid!

Thought it was the dumbest song.

And it's probably my most talked-about song in my career.

Bob Foster gave me a cassette.

I was driving a Monte Carlo--this giant land barge.

The cassette deck always ate the cassette.

But he gave me this piano refrain.

Good mothers, four chords.

The verse progression is the same as the chorus progression.

I love that in music!

There's no changes.

Anyways, I got out of the hair salon.

My friend, Stephanie, had cut bangs.

I was like, OMG, what has happened?

She dyed my hair bright red.

I have the big red lipstick on.

I used to darken in my mole.

That was it--that was like my image for the next few years.

But anyway, I sat-- I didn't have a pen.

But I smoked back in those days.

I opened up my Du Maurier packet, folded it out.

This big white canvas.

I had black--of course, I had black eyeliner in my purse.

I listened to that cassette that Bob had sent me.

I've got money in my pocket.

I like the colour of my hair.

I've got a friend who loves me.

Got a house.

I've got a car.

I wanted to write a piece of crap car but... then it ended up on the record.

Which I didn't think it would.

'Cause I thought this is so personal to me.

But it's really been a phenomenal experience for me.

How people react to that song.

>> Well, I mostly cry when I hear it.

You know?

Yeah, I had a good mother too.

>> Yeah, it touches a nerve.

It's a great song for funerals and weddings.

So it's very personal.

( laughing ) My mom, the only thing she ever said about that song-- imagine you playing that song to your parents?

My dad was sitting there, the scowl on his face.

There's a caveat to this-- he did get sober.

>> The last 25 years of his life, he was sober.

>> So his strength does make you cry.

>> He was sober and that's a major undertaking.

He was still a cracker-- he was so cranky.

But my mom said, "Well, it's got a really good beat."

( laughing ) >> My dad, years later, 'cause people were always writing me letters.

Mom and Dad loved to sit at the kitchen table-- like in those mid-90s and read fan mail.

They'd have a pile and they'd read them.

Mom would just say, "Well, I just can't believe it!"

Dad said to me, "I'm in that GD song too."

I said, "Yes you are, Dad."

Not just your mom.

I said, "I know that, Dad."

>> One of...probably the greatest thing you did was care for your mom as she, you know, declined in Alzheimer's.

>> Valerie: You decided to share, put it on FaceBook.

Got incredible response.

You wrote a book about it, Feeding My Mother .

What a time.

You've been the good daughter.

>> She would have done it for me.

That's all I need to know.

Yeah, it's super sad.

But it's the hardest thing I ever did and the most rewarding.

I thought, OMG, the irony of me looking after my dad.

The last person in the world that I wanted to help.

I learned a lot about myself.

I learned so much about myself.

Filial piety , the idea of looking after parents is very much parts of other cultures.

You know, Chinese, Japanese culture.

People absorb their elderly parents into the home.

Doesn't matter if they had 8,2 or 9 kids.

You're going to feed Grandma.

She's in the corner.

Someone put her pants on.

Right?

Not here.

We shuffle them off.

And I did that.

The very last possible moment.

I had to because it was medical.

The bedroom was upstairs.

She was happy as Larry when we got her in.

We moved her just at the right time.

>> One of the things you wrote, after your mom had died.

You said, "My mother left me with a lifetime of words."

"Don't think for a second, the things you say to people don't linger and last, because they do."

"Make them good ones.

Kind, fair, encouraging."

>> "I carry them like a sword or a shield."

>> Uhuhhmmmmm.

>> She's your North Star.

>> Very much so.

I think about her all the time.

And you know, I cried a lot when she was alive.

I don't cry so much about her anymore.

Because she once said to me, "Jan, your soul is your pilot and your body is your spaceship."

This is full-blown Alzheimer's.

She was, "Well, you can't take your body where you're going.

You just can't breathe.

So you have to leave it behind."

I felt like she just knew stuff.

And Alzheimer's is tough.

Anyone going through that, keep your wits about you.

You'll get there.

It's hard.

You'll never do anything harder.

But at the end of it, when they go, there's such pride.

When you carry that pride going forward in your life, I'm telling you that will get you over so many hard things.

>> Now you're say you're very like your dad.

And you must have been thinking, having seen him in his state as an alcoholic, I'll never be like that.

And yet... >> I was like that.

>> You were?

>> I was an alcoholic.

I am an alcoholic.

And people picture someone who drinks every day.

Dadadah.

I just didn't have a switch to turn it off.

I'm very lucky to be alive.

Lots of-- I never hit another car.

But I would end up in the ditch.

Walk home through the field.

My parents would be like, "Where's your car?"

I'm like, "I don't know where it is."

I lost my car once for three weeks.

I was just a really crappy drinker.

I had lots of heart issues.

I was in and out of the hospital.

This woman finally said to me, she was a nurse-practitioner.

"Jan, your heart doesn't like it."

"How much are you drinking?"

I said, "A lot".

She said, "You gotta stop."

And I did!

I think that was like--it's been 9 years now, in August.

I'm so lucky.

But it was just...you know, alcoholism too, people need to be easy on themselves.

It's not a character flaw, it's a disease.

And my dad genetically handed it to me like a $100 dollar bill.

Here, this is what I've got.

Good luck with that.

The alcohol abuse was inescapable.

I would have been that, if I was a dentist or a teacher.

It wasn't because of the music business.

It was sitting there waiting.

But I managed to, you know, get out of it.

>> It seems, you know, you're loving your 60s.

>> Are you more in control now?

>> Yeah.

>> You're writing another novel, doing all kinds of things.

>> But I really enjoy it.

I just don't want to sit idle.

Joan Rivers in a documentary she did, she goes, the worst thing she could possibly fathom in her life is an empty calendar.

I don't like seeing an empty calendar.

I don't want every day filled.

Like I said, when I don't work, I really don't work.

I hang out with my dog.

I'm in the trees.

I read a lot.

I have four cups of tea before 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

I have friends over for dinner.

I have a really quiet, small life.

I don't live in the city.

But when I go, and when I work, there we are, there we go.

But it's fun.

I work with people I really laugh with.

And I really have a good time with.

I don't have anyone telling me do this, do that.

This is what I'd like to try.

How about this?

Chris and I are always trying to figure out.

What can we do?

Maybe we can try that, maybe we can do this.

>> Maybe I can pose naked for Brian Adams.

>> OMG, what was I thinking?

But I'm glad I did.

( laughing ) >> I just--I remember the day we were in New York.

And he'd done like, a regular photo shoot.

And he said, "You know you're 50."

"Do you want to let me take a picture?"

He showed me an example of it.

Of this beautiful woman with this beautiful body.

I just thought, for women, I need to do this for all of us.

I was just turning 50.

I just threw that robe off, laid down.

Wasn't the front of me or anything, just my bottom.

And he took pictures.

It ended up on the cover of Zoomer.

I think it was one of their highest-selling Zoomer covers.

But...I'm glad I did it.

You know, to be able to look at yourself fairly.

And without any kind of--oh, I should look like this or that.

I've been so many different versions of myself over the years.

But...I'm still signing those once in awhile.

Somebody will come up to me in a line-up and they'll slam that nude picture of my butt down.

And I'm singing my name on my butt.

>> And you're always giving out advice.

>> Am I?

>> Well don't they?

They come and say what do I do about drinking?

>> Well, Don't listen to me!

Because there's no one way to do anything.

If my friends ask me, I'm more than happy to offer my advice.

But they never take it.

My friends aren't stupid.

They're like, "Okay, I think I'll do this anyway."

But it's nice to be able to feel sage.

I always think that I'm a crone.

You know, coming out of the trees with my big stick.

And just doing things on my own terms.

And that feels good.

I got a chance to interview Jane Goodall this year.

It really was one of the highlights of my life.

Just talking to her at 90 years old.

She's travelling 300 days a year advocating for animals.

I just think that's what I'd... where I'd like to go.

I'd like to keep doing that in my life and ringing that bell.

Trying to wake people up of what we're doing to the planet.

What we're doing--she's so knowledgeable and so peaceful.

She's a peaceful warrior.

She doesn't yell the message.

She whispers.

She's up there at the microphone and everyone's just...listening.

>> She's amazing.

>> She's something else.

>> The final question we always ask is what does being Canadian mean to you?

>> Everything!

I know we're kind of divisive right now.

But my prized possession in my life is my Canadian passport.

This is one of the greatest places to live in the world.

I can say that because I've travelled all over the world.

I know what people are facing out there.

But people see the news every day and they still, somehow just twist what that means.

But I'm very proud to be Canadian.

I'm going to stay here.

I haven't left.

I live five miles from where I grew up.

Yah, it's pretty incredible to live here.

And to have the opportunities that I've had.

>> Yeah, lucky.

>> Well, I've been lucky to talk to you again.

>> Valerie.

>> Miss.

Thank you so much.

>> My great pleasure.

>> We'll be back next week with another episode of Canada Files .

♪