Hailing from Springbank, singer-songwriter Jann Arden was a hard-working musician for over a decade before the release of her second album, Living Under June, catapulted her into the spotlight in the fall-winter of 1994-1995 (right around the time Avenue launched as a publication). We caught up with Arden to find out what it was like making her hit record, how it feels to still be performing the Living Under June songs 30 years later, and why she has remained a hometown gal, even after achieving worldwide success.
Can you believe Living Under June is 30 years old?
ARDEN: “Really, I can. It feels like a long time has gone by. I’ve done 16 records and Living Under June was my second record.”
How does it hold up for you? Do you like listening to your old work?
ARDEN: “I don’t really listen, no. You listen so much at the time you’re making it, you just listen, listen, listen. You hear everything hundreds of times. So, I don’t really revisit stuff. If I hear it on the radio once in a while, I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’ “But I think it holds up well…. That kind of singer-songwriter music generally tends to have a much longer shelf life than typical pop music. So, in that regard, you could put Living Under June on today, and it’s very much that — a grassroots singer-songwriter record. It doesn’t really date itself production-wise.”
Did you anticipate the kind of response this album would get? Did you feel like you had made something that was going to be really popular?
ARDEN: “Oh Lord, no! I mean, it felt really special making it, the songs felt really solid and the band was excited. But, as far as it getting any traction, oh, god, I was absolutely clueless. I’m still surprised all these years later by the legs that “Insensitive” has, and where that song took me. I didn’t write that song — it was written by another Calgary woman named Anne Loree. She was a waitress at a diner, and I remember hearing her play at little clubs in Calgary, and that’s one of the songs she would play. This is in the ’80s, and I just thought, ‘What a great song that is.’ I’m still surprised by the success of that song, and how much it is covered.
“The whole record kind of took off; I think there were six or seven singles off of Living Under June. I literally left home and I got back three years later. It was that crazy of a time, like Letterman and Leno and Good Morning America and all the American press and that New Year’s Eve special with Dick Clark — I remember taping that in October and pretending that it was New Year’s. It just seems like a blur, but really, a special time, for sure.”
You’re saying you taped New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in October 1996 and had to pretend it was New Years?
ARDEN: “Yeah, they always did [record musical performances in advance of the New Year’s Eve festivities]. It was always pre-taped. It was in a warehouse with people dressed up in hats, they weren’t really drinking, they were extras, just standing around in the corner like a bunch of bowling pins [until the] song would start. I think I did “Insensitive” and “Good Mother.” Not particularly New Year’s Eve fodder! I mean, you couldn’t ask for two more depressing songs. I just remember people kind of slow dancing in this giant warehouse, lit up to look like a New Year’s party. It’s like The Wizard of Oz; you get to look behind that curtain, and everything becomes very kind of perfunctory. And you’re like, wow, this is what this is. It’s just kind of a made-up thing.”
What were you like at the time when this album came out?
ARDEN: “Exactly the same. I was very feet-on-ground, and I didn’t take any of it too seriously … I mean, I live in the same place [now] that I lived in then. I had lived in downtown Calgary for a while, but, as soon as I could afford to, I moved back out west of the city, and I’m still there. I still have the same friends. My life is very steady. You know, I’m a working musician. That’s what I am. I’m not a celebrity. There’s no street named after me, none of that. People don’t put up a fuss around me at all. I’ll wander around Costco on a Saturday afternoon, and I might have two people that look at me like, ‘I think that’s Jann Arden’s mother.’”
The one thing people say about this city is that often the richest guy in the room is the one who looks like he just walked in from mucking out stalls, so that “everywoman” aspect kind of makes you the quintessential Calgarian artist.
ARDEN: “Yeah, I never wanted to leave. Every time I went to Los Angeles, I was like, am I ever glad I don’t have to live here! But, keep in mind I signed my record deal when I was almost 30, so I was a fully formed person. I wasn’t naive, I wasn’t 15, I didn’t have anyone moulding me. I’d been working in bars for over 10 years. I had so much experience, I was an old lady at 30. I was kind of beaten up, and I’d been drinking really hard for a decade. I played week after week after week in bars — it wasn’t like I did a contest on a TV show for 14 weeks and suddenly was a household name. It was an incredible amount of work.”
If you could go back to when you were making this album and change anything, what would you change?
ARDEN: “I don’t think anything! I mean, it’s a really good question, but I felt like I was in such capable hands. My producer Ed Cherney, who sadly passed away a few years ago, when I met him, he was working with Bonnie Raitt on Nick of Time and Clapton on “Tears in Heaven” — he had come off these huge Don Was records — and he took me on. He said: ‘I’m really good at clearing the way. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to clear a path for you and your songs.’ He said, ‘We just want to hear the songs and we want to hear what you have to say.’ So, I’m really grateful to him.”
What’s something you love most about the album?
ARDEN: “Jackson Browne was always wandering around — he owned the studio and he had a little office — and he ended up singing on one of the tracks [“Unloved”]. Ed said, ‘Why don’t you ask him? It wasn’t written as a duet, but I bet it would play really well as a duet.’ So I was like, ‘Hey Jackson…’ And he was like, ‘I’d love to. Sure, sure Jann.’ And, I mean, Jackson Browne was one of my heroes growing up! Just one of the greatest, he was in Laurel Canyon with Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young!
“I remember David Crosby coming in the studio one day, showing everybody all these guitar tunings, and we were just all sitting staring at him. But they were just normal guys. They wanted to hang out and listen to music. And I was made to feel like I deserved to be there, and that was special. It did a lot for my confidence.”
Like you said, you’ve put out 16 albums, but this one is so beloved. People still want to hear “Insensitive.” So what’s it like performing those songs now?
ARDEN: “They feel just as solid and just as present and new as they ever did. I know that seems hard to believe — you will talk to artists that are like, ‘If I ever have to sing this song again…’ But I’ve never felt that way. There are probably five songs we do off of Living Under June on every tour. I couldn’t not sing, “Good Mother.” I couldn’t not sing, “Could I Be Your Girl.” I am always grateful for them. They’ve morphed over the years, of course, live, but it’s still so, so fun.”
[The video for “Insensitive,” shot at the Anderson Apartments on the 800 block of 18th Avenue S.W., is just as iconic as the song. Arden and her collaborator, fellow Calgarian Jeth Weinrich, shot around 10 or 11 of her videos here in the city.]
You had been recording in L.A. with these big-time producers and your musical heroes, but then you came back to Calgary to film your videos. Why?
ARDEN: “I just wanted to be home. It’s not a made-up place … I still travel 200 days a year in my job. So, trust me, you just want to go home. I want to hang out with my dog and be in the house. I wouldn’t know what to do in L.A. Like, what do you do there? Sit in traffic? Buy a Salma Hayek smoothie? They need a Jann Arden smoothie somewhere.”
What’s in the Jann Arden smoothie?
ARDEN: “Chocolate protein powder — like Vega, I love that stuff — a banana, maybe a little bit of oats, and some oat milk or coconut milk, and a bunch of ice, and blitz it up. There you go. It’s like a milkshake. Would it kill somebody to name a smoothie after me?”
Interview has been edited and condensed.