Information/Write-up
released March 6, 2026
With Queen Of The Strait, Jenn Grant has created one of the most personal and emotionally revealing albums of her career. Released in 2026, the record is built from vivid autobiographical fragments — childhood memories, family rupture, motherhood, grief, survival, and the quiet persistence of love — and shaped into a set of songs that feel both intimate and universal. While Grant has long occupied a distinctive place in Canadian music through her ability to blend folk, pop, country, and dreamlike Americana, this album stands apart for its unusual directness. These songs do not hide behind abstraction. They revisit specific moments, people, and experiences that have clearly stayed with her for decades.
The title refers to the ferry crossings of Grant’s childhood between Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia after her parents’ separation — a recurring symbol of movement, transition, and resilience that runs through the album. Much of the material serves as a tribute to her late mother, who emerges here not as a mythic figure but as a deeply human presence: stylish, strong, wounded, resourceful, and central to Grant’s understanding of love and endurance. Other songs move into darker and more difficult territory, including family instability, childhood pain, and adult trauma, but Grant handles these subjects with remarkable control. The writing is frank without becoming performative, and the emotional weight of the album comes not from dramatic gestures, but from the precision of its details.
Musically, Queen Of The Strait is understated but beautifully judged. Recorded live off the floor at Echo Lake in Nova Scotia without headphones, the album has an organic warmth that suits its reflective nature. The arrangements are spacious and uncluttered, built around acoustic guitar, upright bass, lap steel, piano, light percussion, and subtle brass and reed textures, all of which keep the focus on Grant’s voice and the stories she is telling. Her longtime collaborator Daniel Ledwell and co-producer Joshua Van Tassel shape the sessions with admirable restraint, allowing the songs to breathe rather than crowding them with production. That simplicity proves to be one of the album’s great strengths. Nothing feels overworked, and the performances carry the natural ease of musicians listening closely to one another in the room. The live-off-the-floor approach and core credits are explicitly documented in the release details.
What makes the album especially effective is the contrast between its emotional depth and its melodic lightness. Grant often pairs painful subject matter with arrangements that drift, sway, or quietly glow, refusing the obvious cues of heavy-handed confession. That balance gives the record a rare grace. Songs such as ‘Jim Cuddy Dress’ and the closing title track carry warmth and movement even as they are rooted in loss and remembrance, while ‘Put It On A Shelf’ stands as one of the boldest songs in her catalogue — a stark but controlled act of witness that expands the emotional and thematic reach of the record.
-Robert Williston
Musicians
Jenn Grant: vocals, acoustic guitar
Kim Harris: vocals
Kyle Cunjak: upright bass
Christine Bougie: lap steel guitar, telecaster, Nashville guitar
Daniel Ledwell: guitar, Wurlitzer, piano, clarinet, flugelhorn, saxophone
Joshua Van Tassel: drums, percussion, Ondea, piano
Songwriting
'Jim Cuddy Dress' written by Jenn Grant and Kenneth Blair Yates
'Crazy' written by Jenn Grant
'Gonna Be Free' written by Jenn Grant
'Daddy & His Shotgun' written by Jenn Grant
'Ladies Night' written by Jenn Grant
'Take Me To The Movies' written by Jenn Grant
'Seaglass' written by Jenn Grant
'I Hate The Violin' written by Jenn Grant
'Nobody Knows' written by Jenn Grant
'Put It On A Shelf' written by Jenn Grant
'Queen Of The Strait' written by Jenn Grant, Kim Harris, and Mary Powell Bragg
Production
Produced by Daniel Ledwell and Joshua Van Tassel
Engineered by Daniel Ledwell and Joshua Van Tassel
Recorded at Echo Lake
Mixed by Joshua Van Tassel at Dream Date Studio
Mastered by Heather Kirby at Dreamlands Mastering
Manufactured by Precision Record Pressing
Plated at GZ Media
Artwork
Photography by D. W. Ledwell
Design by D. W. Ledwell
Layout by D. W. Ledwell
Notes
Precision Record Pressing job no. 10-116377
GZ Media plating no. 311377E
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