Jed Arbour wants you to feel it all
Photo credit: Matt Wallace (@citizenblitz)
Whether it’s made from Montreal, Calgary, or now rural B.C., Jed Arbour creates music that sits comfortably in discomfort. Led by songwriter, guitarist, vocalist, and clarinetist Jed Arbour, the project has built a reputation for emotionally charged performances that move between folk, experimental composition, punk intensity, and deeply personal storytelling.
Exploring themes of trauma, addiction, loneliness, and collective healing, Arbour’s work asks listeners to sit with difficult emotions rather than look away from them. Fresh off a collaborative residency through the Werklund Centre TD Amplify program and with multiple ambitious new records already in the works, Arbour remains committed to making music that is challenging and, above all, deeply human.
REVERIE: For our readers, could you introduce yourself? What drew you to music?
JED ARBOUR: My name is Jed. I am a 30 year old queer and I live on a piece of land in a hamlet called Spillimacheen. I grew up as a dancer, so I learned early that you can be physically and emotionally moved by music. I started writing songs the second I picked up a guitar. I actually remember stealing my brother’s video camera and his guitar and recording songs before anybody knew that I played music. He proceeded to find those videos and make fun of me with his cool older brother friends.
REVERIE: Your live performances are an emotional journey more often than not. Where do you draw inspiration from for your eclectic performances?
JED ARBOUR: Inspiration for me comes from sitting and listening to what is happening inside me. There’s always something big to process. When I listen long, what I hear gives me the urge to create. Performance forces me to be incredibly present with the feeling that I had when I was writing it, so it’s pretty hard to do anything but feel it so deeply.
I’m also really inspired by hardcore shows and watching all the young punk kids thrash around. I get a lot of joy watching them, and I can see how much music changes people. I always want my shows to give back like they do. By this I mean instead of performing for me to feel something, it is to create a space for everybody else to feel something collectively.
Photo credit: Matt Wallace (@citizenblitz)
REVERIE: What themes did you find yourself exploring in your 2023 album, disappointing dog park, and do you see yourself still writing music in that realm?
JED ARBOUR: Well let’s see, in sequence of the album we have “Still Red”: a sexy but terrifying lesbian dream. “You’re Most Kind”: Sexual assault. “Walmart”: The bleakness of America and capitalism. I just relistened to “Heavy Breathing Erie Music” (my favorite track) and honestly I have no fucking clue what I was talking about but I feel a lot when I hear those lyrics still. Probably some freaky dream I had is my best guess.
“Parasite”: sexual assault again and how it sticks in your body. “Complete”: Working in a group home in Iqaluit. “Damien”: addiction and shame. Music will always be a way for me to explore the hardest to look at parts of myself, so it will always be in this realm for sure.
I often write lyrics way before the music, and then combine them later. I have notebooks of random poems and when I write a track I typically will pick from my catalogue. Things have become a lot less dark for me on the ranch, so maybe I’ll start writing about cows and horses, and bush life.
As for the music side of things, we recently wrote an album about my experience as a frontline worker during the opioid crisis. It’s a concept album, one song, 45 minutes long, and the music really reflects the horrendous nature of this current reality; it’s incredibly uncomfortable to listen to. Hopefully we’ll record and release that by next year.
REVERIE: This past season, you were part of the TD Amplify Cohort. What were your main learnings from the program? Anything you found particularly challenging?
JED ARBOUR: When I found out it was going to be with Aditya (a classical Hindustani singer) and Darya (a contemporary dancer), it felt like a perfect perfect trio. Our band played a lot with the Byzantine scale, so I knew Aditya singing over top of our creepy off-key music was going to be wicked.
We’re a pretty old band and definitely entrenched in our ways at this point, so I was excited to spice things up. I’m really grateful for that experience, and it was so fucking amazing to meet Kenna Burima, and become friends with her, and have her challenge us every single time with really deep questions, and picking our brains for all that we think of.
REVERIE: Your set during Amplify created a unique blend of sound across multiple genres and performance arts. What was that like for you?
JED ARBOUR: Yeah, I absolutely loved the final piece. We’re going to bring parts of that collaboration for our Sled performance. It’s a completely different set, but Aditya and Darya will both make an appearance. It really felt like the perfect thing Jed Arbour was missing.
Photo credit: Matt Wallace (@citizenblitz)
REVERIE: The photos our team took of you had a really cute dog in the mix! Who is that little fella?
JED ARBOUR: That’s my doggy Prudence. My old doggy Twiggy is still alive; she’s on the 1st album cover, she’s now 18 years old. Prudence is just three.
REVERIE: What does the next chapter for Jed Arbour look like?
JED ARBOUR: I’m having so much fun playing music with [band members] Drew and Kat and Ripley lately. It’s been zero work and all play, and somehow we’re creating more than ever. We have a 45 minute long album to be released, and we’re already almost done our fourth album, which will feature Aditya!
After disappointing dog park, I had to take a long break from music. It was draining writing such complicated music, finishing my masters in social work, being new to Calgary, dealing with a lot of loneliness. After that break we came back and wrote a super simple devastating album.