For someone who is so funny, why does Calgary singer-songwriter Jann Arden consistently write such sad songs?
It's a question she admits she's been asked repeatedly by fans during her two-decade career.
The answer may be contained within Arden's memoir, Falling Backwards -- specifically, the parts about her troubled first 30 years. The book -- named after the trust exercises she did when briefly enrolled in Mount Royal College's drama program -- went on sale earlier this week, and Arden is promoting it this month with a tour.
As well, the 49-year-old has a new CD of cover songs, Uncover Me 2.
"I'm still learning how to trust people," said Arden, with her trusty miniature dog Midi at her side in a Toronto hotel room. "I think that's an ongoing, unfolding thing. We try and make better choices as we get older."
In her book, Arden details her life from infancy in Calgary, to an eager-to-be-liked and popular young girl in Springbank, Alta., to getting a pacemaker when she was only 20, to being an often promiscuous and drunk twentysomething while touring with bar bands until signing her own record deal at age 29.
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But along the way there were family troubles. Her father battled alcoholism, which led her mother to throw him out of the house temporarily until he sobered up (they've now been married 53 years and live 50 feet from Arden in the countryside outside Calgary). Then there were the drug and alcohol struggles of older brother Duray, who has spent the past two decades behind bars for the first-degree murder of a woman in B.C. despite maintaining his innocence; he's due for release in 2017. The family visits him every three weeks. As well, Arden has a younger, adopted brother -- Patrick -- who seems to have been remarkably unscathed.
"I realize now how isolated my mom was," Arden said. "So that was kind of hard to think back and try and figure out how I could have helped my mom more. I think you develop a sense of humour because of that."
Then there are Arden's own unpleasant sexual experiences: A 15-year-old cousin locked her in a basement, "dryhumping" her on a couch when she was just 10; and a school friend "hurting" her and taking her virginity in the front seat of his car when she was 17. Arden is reluctant to use the term sexual assault in both cases.
"You realize very quickly that you're definitely not alone with your experiences," Arden said. "It's across the board, everywhere. There has to be some kind of solidarity with women, that it doesn't define you and you can get past it. It doesn't haunt me. It hasn't ruined my life. It hasn't done anything of a derogatory nature. People that certainly know me and have followed my career know that obviously it turned out OK. We all survived."
That doesn't mean it wasn't scary to write it all down over the course of the last year and a half.
"It was terrifying," she said. "Like, if I was sitting there telling a story that would have really made my parents completely uncomfortable and hurt my brother's feelings, and made my friends think that they want to pack up their leftovers and go home, I didn't put it in there."
So not exactly warts and all, but pretty close.
At age 20, Arden was viciously assaulted physically while busking in Vancouver's Gaston area, which steered her away from busking for good.
What turned her life around was a fateful job as a deckhand on a salmon fishing boat in B.C with a seventysomething fisherman by the name of Norman Earl.
"I used to puff away on cigarettes. I cut that out, and I wasn't drinking six bottles of beer every day and s----y wine. I called it the rehab boat. I just thought, 'What do I have to lose at this point because I'm never going to be a singer.' And then, of course, life just goes where it's going to go."
Arden has fun with cover albums
Jann Arden's latest CD, Uncover Me 2, released earlier this week, is the follow-up to her first covers disc, 2007's Uncover Me.
She says she was obligated by her label to make a record after 2009's disc of original material, Free.
"I said, 'I haven't written an original note.' I haven't written any music,'" Arden, 49, said in an interview in Toronto. "I didn't feel like writing music. My heart wasn't in it. It was nice to take a break, to tell you truth."
Instead, Arden's manager Bruce Allen hooked her up with Bob Rock as a producer for a covers record, save for one original song.
"He said, 'Let's just have a relaxing, really fun time. No pressure.'"
In the end, the wide range of songs -- from Fleetwood Mac's Dreams to Peggy Lee's Is That All There Is -- were chosen by Arden, Allen and Rock.
For the Lee classic, Arden even wrote some of her own verses, based on her new memoir, Falling Backwards.
"When we sent it off to the people who owned the song, they said no, which was fine," Arden said. "I'm still going to do that live."
Arden will tour Canada in March in support of Uncover Me 2, even if her fans don't always recognize her before show time.
During her multi-night run at Toronto's Massey Hall on her last tour, Arden said she was offered scalped tickets to her own show.
"I said, 'Actually, I've got really good seats, but thanks.' I'm, like, on the stage."
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