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  • 39. When We Wake with Leanne Hoffman
    2025/07/18

    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


    Wanna get in touch


    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

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    45 分
  • 38. When We Wake with Sarah Harmer
    2025/07/16

    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


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    30 分
  • 37. When We Wake with Suzie Ungerleider
    2025/07/08

    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

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    41 分
  • 36. When We Wake with Alexander Gallant
    2025/06/16

    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 that, once you’ve been introduced to Alexander Gallant’s music, well, you come to expect from it.

    In our conversation today Alex, opens up about his songwriting process, the writers that shaped him, and the clarity that came with getting sober. Be sure to hang around all the way to the end to hear the story behind the hit song that never was.

    @alexanderthegallant


    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 on nine stations across Canada.


    Theme song Got You by Noah Reid

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    43 分
  • 35. When We Wake with Mo Kenney
    2025/06/01

    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 Conservatory (at Long & McQuade not the Royal Conservatory, which was, you know, what I thought), Mo lived in the country where their best friend didn't live across the street, he lived across the field. Mo’s beloved childhood pet was, in fact, not a dog, it was a goat, named Nicky.


    Since then Mo has become one of Canada’s finest songwriters. They have picked up a couple pocketfuls of awards along the way, including several Nova Scotia Music Awards, some East Coast Music Awards, a Canadian Folk Music Award, a SOCAN Songwriter Award and a Juno Award nomination - among others.


    I’m such a big fan of Mo’s and, I hope, if this is somehow your introduction to them, that you will be too.


    mokenney.com

    @mookenney


    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.


    Theme song Got You by Noah Reid.

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    30 分
  • 34. When We Wake with Dan Mangan
    2025/05/23

    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 beauty.


    Recorded over 6 days in a cabin in the woods with 3 of his best buds (Mike O’Brien, Jason Haberman, and Don Kerr), Natural Light wasn’t even supposed to happen.


    With a recording session lined up in LA a few months later, the session in the woods with the buds was intended as more of a songwriting retreat in between lake jumps and egg scrambles.


    Instead, the songs and their recordings “unfolded like a miracle” and, as you'll hear, Dan's never been prouder of an album.


    danmanganmusic.com

    @danmanganmusic



    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 on 9 stations across Canada.


    Theme song Got You by Noah Reid




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    38 分
  • 33. When We Wake with Braden Lam
    2025/05/04

    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 you’ll hear in our chat, Braden thinks so too.


    He has put himself on a self-prescribed 3 by 30 regiment: 3 albums by the time he’s 30. And, if you ask him, he’ll be touring those albums through stadiums. Naturally. He has less than 3 years…and ticking,


    The man dreams big and why not - he works as hard as he dreams. Braden has the songwriting skills, the stage presence, and the sheer drive to make it happen. For my money, he’s got as good a shot as anybody.


    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 on half a dozen stations across Canada.


    Theme song Got You by Noah Reid

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    42 分
  • 32. When We Wake with Joel Plaskett
    2025/04/24
    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, Arkells, The Sheepdogs, Jenn Grant, Rose Cousins, Alan Doyle, David Myles, City and Colour, Matthew Barber, and his sister Jill Barber. And that’s not even half of them. The album is a remarkable testament to one of Canada’s finest songwriters.As you’ll hear in our chat, Joel was looking forward to a quiet 50th. Instead, he got dragged into a full on press campaign. As most conversations with Joel go, we weren’t constrained to a single avenue. Sure, we talk about Songs From the Gang, but our chat also meanders back to his most recent album One Real Reveal, over to its companion film, Character Witness, and back up to the media course he’s currently taking with Andrew McLuhan, Marshall’s grandson. That and more on today’s episode with Joel Plaskett.Wanna get in touch?Send an email to ⁠whenwewakeradio@gmail.com⁠Or find me on Instagram@whenwewakeradio & @theandrewshaverWhen We Wake with Andrew Shaver is written, hosted, edited, and produced by Andrew Shaver. The radio broadcast is syndicated across the country, info can be found here.Theme song Got You by Noah Reid
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    33 分