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 that fine line between excitement and anxiety — about how they might actually be the same feeling, just showing up in a different outfit.

And, in perhaps my favourite part of our chat, we talk about preparation. About how planning, focus, and intentionality don’t kill creativity — they sharpen it. Leanne Hoffman might just be making rehearsals cool again, and I'm all for it.

Leanne Hoffman on Instagram

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Wanna get in touch?

Send an email to ⁠whenwewakeradio@gmail.com⁠

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@whenwewakeradio & @theandrewshaver

When We Wake with Andrew Shaver is written, hosted, edited, and produced by ⁠Andrew Shaver⁠. The weekly radio broadcast is syndicated across Canada, from Newfoundland to British Columbia.

Theme song Got You by Noah Reid

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 environmental activist — a driving force in efforts to protect Mount Nemo on the Niagara Escarpment and other threatened landscapes. For that work, and for the way she’s woven care and conscience into her music, she was awarded the Humanitarian Award at this year's Junos — and the key to her hometown of Burlington, Ontario.

We first met in Kingston back in the mid-90s, when I was hosting a college radio show on CFRC and she was already writing the songs that would later inform how I’d write mine.

This time, we’re catching up from her country home north of Kingston — where she’s waiting for a call from the lawnmower repair man — and talking about music, memory, activism, and the quiet work of keeping it all going.

Sarah Harmer on Instagram

Wanna get in touch?

Send an email to ⁠whenwewakeradio@gmail.com⁠

Or find me on Instagram

@whenwewakeradio & @theandrewshaver

When We Wake with Andrew Shaver is written, hosted, edited, and produced by ⁠Andrew Shaver⁠. The weekly radio broadcast is syndicated across Canada, from Newfoundland to British Columbia.

Theme song Got You by Noah Reid

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 daughter of her own.

It’s an album rooted in memory and change: about origin stories, about what it means to walk forward while constantly looking back, and about how becoming a parent can completely rewrite the way you understand your own past.

In our chat, we talk about that strange time-travel of songwriting, the wild ride that is parenthood, and what happens when the life you're living becomes the material for your songs up front and unfiltered.

suzieungerleider.com

Wanna get in touch?

Send an email to ⁠whenwewakeradio@gmail.com⁠

Or find me on Instagram

@whenwewakeradio & @theandrewshaver

When We Wake with Andrew Shaver is written, hosted, edited, and produced by Andrew Shaver. The weekly radio broadcast is syndicated across Canada, from Newfoundland to British Columbia.

Theme song Got You by Noah Reid