Fourth in a series of five Music Life Magazine interviews with 2025 Inductees into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Legends Induction Ceremony takes place Friday, Oct. 17, at the Lyric Theatre in the Meridian Arts Centre in downtown Toronto.
By Jim Barber
If there was anyone for whom the title or epithet artist belongs, in all facets of its complex meaning, it is Jane Siberry. And even then, she, herself would probably gently dissuade you from claiming that title on her behalf. Which in turn, makes the demarcation even more true.
It is not from false modesty, nor from lack of gratitude or any feeling of unworthiness that she eschews formal designations, assignations and celebrations. It is, as it seems, because to her the act of creation, the process of communing with the muses, of taking what is bubbling and boiling beneath the surface of her psyche, what is meandering through the spiritual space she inhabits, is who she is, not what she is. It is not a job description or title; it is who she is. Siberry, through her music and other forms of creative processing, lives a life of observation and reportage on the human condition. She crafts songs that incorporate deep thought, beauty, truth, passion, life, love and light and uses the vehicle of her recordings and live performances to commune with fellow humans, to share these thoughts and ideas, to give and receive energy.
And while such talk, to some, might seem like pretentiousness, that ‘artsy fartsy’ type of conversation that is lampooned in movies and popular culture, there is no pretense in Siberry. No artifice, just rarified integrity, authenticity and artistic magic.
One can sense through the sheer level of experimentation, the many exploratory musical adventures she has embarked upon, the weight of intellectual energy and emotional potency that imbues every note, every lyric and every beat that there is a restless cacophony of stories, characters, colours, shapes and sounds waiting to come out. The sense of unbridled curiosity and fearlessness in the way she presents her experiences of the human condition is almost child-like; certainly almost innocent in that it is unencumbered by any outside expectations, bows to no trend or fashion, but is rather timeless and perpetually relevant to those willing to bend an ear.
It is for this, for her collected body of musical creativity that Siberry is to be inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame at special Legends event on Friday, Oct. 17, in Toronto. She will be enshrined alongside other Canadian musical luminaries such as Gino Vannelli, Ian Thomas, Triumph and Andy Kim.
Yes, Siberry has sipped from the golden chalice of commercial success, she has spent her time in the bright lights of fame and been considered amongst the glitterati of ‘pop stars’ and hit makers, had her face on the covers of magazines, popping up regularly on video music channels and her voice. But she has also rejected the machinations and machinery that infects and dominates the ‘business’ side of the music business, carving her own path, living a life that is unfettered by materialism, and one that is certainly contrary to the lifestyles seemingly celebrated by the contemporary entertainment industry. Life, art, music and all that goes with it has been lived, conducted, expressed and experienced on her own terms. For this, while the popular mass acclaim may not be what it once was (fame, as we all know, is pretty fickle and ephemeral) her music, her words, her voice and her performances have ensured that she is beloved, honoured, admired and respected by those who appreciate their artists to be true to themselves first, artists who can pluck ideas and stories and emotions from their own hearts, and be unafraid to be real, and raw – the buzzword ‘authentic’ is apt, but in the context of it’s modern overuse, seems lacking in regards to Siberry.
From her earliest days in the Toronto music scene, to being signed to Duke Street/A&M Records, where she earned accolades and airplay aplenty for her albums No Borders Here (1984) which produced the massive, and some would say unexpected hit, ‘Mimi On The Beach,’ a masterwork and inspired melange of avant-garde, New Wave, folk and pop music, which garnered significant spins on radio stations, as well as MuchMusic, even though the song was more than seven minutes long.
The Speckless Sky album followed a year later, which propelled Siberry’s light even higher into the pop music stratosphere, leading to a more substantial American record deal with Reprise Records (the label started by Frank Sinatra, which included the likes of fellow Canadian Neil Young), leading to her third album, 1988s The Walking, which helped land her opening slots on tours by the likes of Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel, but was more experimental, more intricate, and thus, at least to those in the record business, less commercial.
Shifts in her life lead to shifts in musical tone and direction, with her next couple of albums, Bound By Beauty and especially 1993’s When I Was A Boy demonstrating the dynamism of her compositional skills, as well as a seemingly more liberated and adventurous personality on record. Other styles and genres of music were added to the musical recipes Siberry was concocting, which were personally and creatively satisfying, but not as pleasing to the corporate label’s bottom line or their desire to want to control how music was to be produced. Hence, Siberry went independent in 1996, starting her own record label. To this day, she is essentially a self-contained indie artist who writes, records, produces and releases her own music, on her own terms, when she feels best pleased to do so, led by a ravenous intelligence, sublime poeticism and an unbridled curiosity.
“I didn’t do that, really, from cynicism. Warner Brothers/Reprise wanted to make me have a producer, and I didn’t want that. So, it was for the creative freedom, that’s why I left the label. That meant that was the end of the music machine, helping with distribution and promotion, and I’ve definitely missed that because that was such a wonderful thing to have people hear about my music. Now, I do just as good music, but maybe not many people hear about it. So, I do miss that, but today I’m creating things fully on my own terms and that makes me happy. That’s all I want to do,” she said.
“And let me expand on that. Two times in my career I have become jaded and felt an unfairness and I had to go through that and think, well why am I doing this? It makes you rethink everything. I came out on the other side, both times, in a better place, and now I’m fully in a good place. There are a lot of wonderful people in the music industry. It’s not the faceless thing we think it is, and everyone’s learning their lessons, everyone’s talking to their own God or whatever, no matter what their job is, you know? And buying into that whole thing, the aspect of competition and art being about popularity, it’s not the truth of it, and it’s good that more and more people know that and are seeing that. The bottom line is money and the people, the musicians make a choice to go on it or not, so you can’t completely fault the system if people are willingly choosing to be a part of it.”
And she feels best pleased to be issuing forth one of her most ambitious projects later this month, the digitally released triple album, In The Thicket of Our Own Unconsciousness.
“I’ve been working on a record for four years, so there’s a lot of pressure on every dollar that comes in. And I don’t like debt, but I have a huge debt from it, so that will stop soon as the record comes to an end, which it just did. I don’t think debt is healthy for anybody, so I’ve had to sort things out and keep things super small for four years. But I still have good coffee in the morning, I still get dog food, I still, when I play, get treated like royalty, and I keep trying to reframe it, you know, that I’m privileged to be a musician, and that’s the ultimate way I see it. So, can I make a living when I play? I can if I play solo. If I play with more than one player, it becomes a labour of love and it’ll often cost me to play. With a band, it’s just like, can I invest in putting on a good show for people and go into debt? No, it’s at that point now, but it may change. You never know,” she said, adding that the decision to write, record and release comes more from an internal realization that she has something to say, and that she wants to share what she has to say with the outside world.
“For about six years, I didn’t have that pressure in me. And then it came back and I had something to say and something to say that wanted to be in communion with others about it. I get the feeling, I get a desire for that communion and then the visions I see and feel become magnetic, and then the words flow in. So it’s a pressure in my heart. And it comes from observing and seeing and feeling what’s going on in the world. I kind of take it all in. Just before COVID, I finished a big tour around the world, playing for fans in living rooms and llama farms and things like that, and then I was seeing everything around the world and I realized there’s way too many people on the planet. There’re way too many cars. We’re really not doing that great and not taking good care of our planet. And I remember people during COVID saying they can hardly wait till things get back to normal, but I am thinking, we are so sick, we are not normal, you know. And then I guess, I don’t know how to say it other that the pressure in my heart just started to create, um, containers for ideas, I guess.”
A sense of communion, of being together in one place, either physically or metaphysically seems to be Siberry’s goal in putting her thoughts and experiences and observations into musical language. It’s to inform, to encourage people to open their eyes, ears and hearts and make their own observations, to be open to sharing and caring, and expressing their concerns and fears and loves and joys as well.
“I see something beautiful and I have to do something, I have to make something from that, and I only write when I’m inspired, really. The gist of the song is inspired and comes from a much higher vibration than normal life. It would say it’s connected to the greatest greater power or higher power, like love, or whatever you call it. So inspiration carries me forward, because I’m actually pretty lazy, so I need that. My writing is really an expression of hope. I would never feel comfortable saying I knew what people should do or say or think.”
Siberry also prefers to release music in long form – the old-fashioned LP. She believes albums are a more comprehensive and compelling vehicle for a songwriter to unburden themselves, take stock of their lives and experiences over a certain period of time, create some sort of emotional connective tissue between each song, and to offer the listener the change to go on a journey through the songwriter’s process, emotional dynamics and perspective over a certain period of time. Over her career, she has released 16 full length studio albums, (In the Thicket of Our Own Unconsciousness is her 17th), five live albums, and here have been five compilations. Some songs have been included in movie soundtracks, the most notable being ‘It Can’t Rain All the Time’ in the 1994 cult classic, The Crow.
“I like long stories. And I like subtle stories. And I see from the bingeing that people do on Netflix and other streaming services that people love stories. I think it’s a throwback to when we couldn’t get our parents to read to us long enough for our own satisfaction. Now we get to press the button for the next episode all by ourselves, over and over, if we want to. I am seeing that people love long stories, and they love being carried away and carried forward, and they loved being dumbed up too, you know. They don’t have to dumb down. I’m like that too, and I just write what I would enjoy right. So, I don’t want to be transported somewhere amazing and then have that world end after six minutes. I want the whole. I want longer,” she explained.
“So the triple record I made, it’s a three-part story and I sort of describe it as a musical Netflix, because it’s all connected with interwoven segues. And there are people arguing back to the song, and things like that. It’s being released digitally because I don’t have a budget for vinyl or CD. Although I am fascinated by the renewed interest in vinyl. I’m heartened by your observation that there are so many young people getting into vinyl. For the last, maybe, 20 years, I’ve wondered where all the original thinkers were, because, honestly, I always felt like I was supposed to be connecting with younger people, you know, an ageless group of listeners. So, yeah, I’m glad to hear about that, but surprised at how long it’s taken and now I’m hearing that younger people are started to really appreciate trade smiths, you know, woodworkers, learning the old crafts.
“I still have trouble understanding the way people listen to music, through streaming and on their phones, I don’t even see why people would want to get up and turn over a vinyl record. But maybe it is because they’re craving that experience. I know I like listening all the way through. I really miss being able to look at the artwork in my hands as I listen. I keep trying to think that maybe I could do a vinyl record that doesn’t have vinyl in it, but has a code, and has all the full-sized artwork, so you can still listen to it and flip through the lyrics and liner notes – actually have that same square vinyl size, which is very pleasing, big enough to read. All of my digital recordings have a PDF with all the artwork in it, so at least there’s something sort of tangible. But it’s the physical thing I miss, like, I miss being able to give people my CD in a bus shelter, where I don’t know people. I loved doing that. That was a really fun part of it. I get to meet people and share something and they have a new record. Now, I don’t have anything to give you.”
Again, Siberry’s music is more than just art for arts sake, or a way to make a living, or express oneself. In conversation, one can tell that music, the making of it, the thinking about it, the pondering the meaning of every lyric, the tone of every note, the infrastructure of every nuance of every song is as integral to her as food, air and water. Thoughtfulness is her default in conversations, as is honesty and plainspokenness.
She reacted to the accolade with a sense of gratitude, but also a tiny bit of discomfort, not because of any feelings of unworthiness, but more because what she values from her art, is not really in line with the American Idol sense of music success.
“It was unexpected and a cherry on the top. Really wonderful energy coming towards me, and I’ve very grateful. And I do understand now that it’s from my peers, not a system that I maybe didn’t know too much about. There are a lot of people involved in the songwriter craft, all wonderful visionaries, you know, trying to create something. So I’m appreciative. It’s what I do, it’s very nice, but I already know I’m a songwriter, and while I am grateful, we can’t buy into these things too much,” she said.
“I’ve always wondered about this whole notion of awards and competition and, I mean, especially in the last 20, 25 years, where art is all over TV now; where it’s all about competition and winning and la-di-da.”
It must also be pointed out that this honour comes fairly close on the heels of earning the 2025 Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize for The Speckless Sky, 40 years after it’s initial release.
Having spent a time, in the mid-1980s, where your value as an artist was measured and enumerated and dissected by various numerical metrics, where your ‘fame’ means bigger venues to perform, but a loss of privacy and anonymity, Siberry is fine with not chasing after something as fickle as notoriety and popularity.
“I had a little bit of that kind of experience and it really wasn’t fun. I would not like to be a famous singer/songwriter. When people started coming to my show, trying to look like me, that’s a weird world and not right for people. They shouldn’t be doing that. So, yeah, that was not something I really wanted. And it meant that I couldn’t go to show and make my own jewelry and sell it or this and that. It’s like when everything is measured in the thousands or tens of thousands, it’s boring,” she said.
“It’s important for musicians to hear and understand that they have value in and of themselves. That’s really important for people to hear because musicians can sometimes consider themselves second class citizens. But I think it’s important that we all understand that we’re all helping each other be more in the service of love. It’s a service of the greater to be a musician and service is sort of a new concept for people. We’re all in this together, and that’s the truth of it. I think it is, anyways, all of us, not just musicians. You, me, everybody.”
And Siberry will be together alongside fellow Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees on Oct. 17. For more information, visit https://www.cshf.ca.
For more information on Siberry, her new releases and upcoming shows, visit https://janesiberry.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at bigjim1428@hotmail.com.
