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It happens every February. Smack dab in the middle of the shortest month with some of the longest nights and coldest days falls St. Valentine’s Day. Proclaimed by the Catholic Church in 496 AD to commemorate the eponymous Christian martyr, the holiday has been associated with romantic love since the Middle Ages.
This year, Halifax singer-songwriter Jenn Grant warms up the Marquee Room with her heartfelt, finely crafted folk songs. While some might dismiss V-day as a crass marketing ploy by confectioners, card-sellers and florists, Grant herself is dismissive of the cynicism. “I love celebrations of any kind,” she says. “I like making cards and making little things for people. I probably wouldn’t get, like, a cellophane-wrapped heart box. I don’t think I would go out with someone who would give me something like that.”
She also suggests that people lighten up on the romantic pressure and trust their hearts.
“I think, hopefully, if a guy’s with the right girl, he would know what to get — or what not to get — worked up about. I’m not interested in that kind of stuff, but if I saw a couple who had been together for a long time and the guy went out and bought her roses or chocolates, I think that would be so cute because it’s sort of the stereotypical thing to do on Valentine’s Day. It just depends on the couple.”
It’s only natural that Grant has some acute insights to affairs of the heart. In addition to being a singer-songwriter and a painter, she’s the daughter of a prominent vascular surgeon. “I think in order to be a surgeon there’s an emotional separation you put in place so you’re able to do that kind of work,” she says. “I worked very hard on breaking down that and now that [my father is] retired, it seems to be working. He’s a very wonderful painter and piano player and I’ve always looked at him as sort of a romantic person. Growing up, he was always birdwatching and telling me about the different types of birds and flowers.”
Springing from creative stock, Grant expressed herself on canvas before finding her home onstage. “I think it’s a similar feeling but different mediums,” she explains. “The place that the creativity is coming from is the same place within me. I started off studying painting in school because it was a way for me to be expressive and involved in the art community without performing onstage. I had a lot of stage fright for all of my teenage years. Now it’s sort of something I do. This tour I brought some art supplies so I’m going to try to do some art on the road.”
This year, Grant and her band (Kinley Dowling on violin and viola, Sean MacGillivray on bass and Dave Christensen on bass clarinet and keyboards) will be braving the frigid highways to bring their craft to the rest of Canada, albeit in a comfortable tour bus. It also doesn’t hurt that the tour’s “technical director,” Daniel Ledwell (keyboardist for Halifax hipsters In Flight Safety), is Grant’s significant other.
For Calgarians who brave the cold to join Grant and co., she promises a romantic evening of sultry songs and soft lighting. What’s her advice for the ideal Valentine’s date? “Dinner and drinks and then come to the show!”
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