An evening with Sarah Jane Scouten

Working as a songwriter means working at almost everything else: Sarah Jane Scouten has worked mucking out horse stalls, hauling hot chafer trays through Toronto’s TTC for The Weeknd’s music video, pruning tea roses at a 16th century Scottish cottage garden — and serving the early morning shift at The Rex Hotel, Toronto’s historic jazz music venue. Inspired by barflies and misfits, and her own complicated relationship with alcohol, she wrote Alright On My Own. “It’s what my life would be like if I never left the bars in Montreal,” she explains. A line from the song: “This heart’s like a wolf, and this body’s a cage,” became the theme of Sarah Jane’s upcoming LP Heart Like A Wolf. Her latest songwriting is that of a mature musician, road worn but not jaded. Most importantly, it renders the perennial experience of a working songwriter through a woman's hands.

Raised in the string band music tradition of western Canada, the same close-knit community that produced Bella White, Pharis and Jason Romero, Le Ren and The Lonesome Ace Stringband, Sarah Jane has been making records since 2010. She now lives in rural Scotland, working part-time as a medical herbalist. Her connection to Scotland comes from her Glaswegian mother and a life-long love of trans-Atlantic songs. Through nostalgic alt-country sounds and themes, her new songs speak directly about pacifism, women’s sexual sovereignty, death… and what climate change might look like to a cattle horse in the 1930’s. Palomino is the blithe refrain of a song inspired by Canadian country songwriter Corb Lund’s outspoken opposition to new coal mining in the Rocky Mountain foothills. She rounds off the record with What Music’s For by epitomising a night of singing honky tonk songs on stage, then jumping off to two-step with a quiet cowboy in tight jeans.

Scottish-Canadian Sarah Jane Scouten’s lucid style has earned her 4 Canadian Folk Music Award nominations and others. She is known as a songwriter’s songwriter, a dry wit and a scintillating stage presence. Heart Like A Wolf features Matt Kelly (City & Colour, Georgia Harmer) on guitars, keys, pedal steel and Graham Jones (Yukon Blonde) on drums. It is Sarah Jane’s second collaboration with producer Johnny Payne (also on bass), recorded at Johnny’s studio-farm on Vancouver Island, British Columbia with a view of the Pacific.

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Please note this ticket price DOES include a BYOB fee should you wish to bring alcohol to the venue.

All additional purchases of non alcoholic drinks and home baked sweet treats from the cafe counter are always very much appreciated.