You could say that Kelly McMichael took the long way round to using her own name. Born in Peterborough, Ontario and now based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, she spent years making music under different monikers and inside other people’s bands, touring with artists like Sarah Harmer, Gentleman Reg, The Hidden Cameras and The Burning Hell.

Along the way she made her own music as Rouge and then Renders, before eventually stepping forward using her name with her Polaris Prize shortlisted debut album Waves, and its Music NL award winning (and Polaris Prize longlisted) follow-up After the Sting of It.

In today's episode, we chat about those different musical lives, the process of finding her own voice, the winding path that led her to the front of the stage, and about sharing vocals on one of my new Clever Hopes songs, Long Way Round...which she absolutely, positively, knocks out of the ballpark.

KellyMcMichael.com

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⁠When We Wake with Andrew Shaver⁠ is written, hosted, edited, and produced by ⁠⁠Andrew Shaver⁠ of ⁠Clever Hopes⁠⁠. The weekly radio broadcast is syndicated across Canada, from Newfoundland to British Columbia.

Theme song Got You by ⁠Noah Reid⁠

My guest today is one of those musicians other musicians talk about. Christine Bougie is widely considered one of Canada’s finest guitarists. She's a sought-after collaborator who’s spent years helping shape the sound of other artists’ songs on stages and records across the country. We’re talking Bahamas, Sarah Harmer, Jenn Grant, Amy Millan, Matt Anderson…and, trust me, the list goes on.

But she’s also an artist with a singular voice of her own, and her new album, How to Care for Introverts, brings that voice front and centre. The record is built around the expressive sound of solo lap steel guitar and was recorded with Chris Stringer at Union Sound in Toronto. It is beautiful, spacious, atmospheric music.

In our conversation, Christine talks about discovering jazz as a teenager, the encouragement she once received from guitar legend Bill Frisell, about how she continues to try to pay that one forward, and why stepping out front as a solo artist can feel both exciting and a little uncomfortable for someone who’s made a career as a side player.

We also talk about embracing imperfection in the studio and the creative power of making space.

@christinebougie

Wanna get in touch?

Send an email to ⁠⁠whenwewakeradio@gmail.com⁠⁠

Or find me on Instagram

⁠@whenwewakeradio ⁠& ⁠@theandrewshaver⁠

⁠When We Wake with Andrew Shaver⁠ is written, hosted, edited, and produced by ⁠⁠Andrew Shaver⁠ of ⁠Clever Hopes⁠⁠. The weekly radio broadcast is syndicated across Canada, from Newfoundland to British Columbia.

Theme song Got You by ⁠Noah Reid⁠

My guest today is one of Nova Scotia’s finest songwriters, and one-time touring bass player for Stompin Tom Connors, Pictou County’s Dave Gunning.

His new album Field Notes wasn’t recorded in a traditional studio at all. It was captured outdoors in Australia, under a gumtree, with one microphone on Dave and two more pointed at the birds (kookaburras?). No isolation booths. No endless second-guessing. Just voice, guitar, and whatever the day decided to offer.

On one track, Angels' Share, a bird chirps perfectly in key during the instrumental and stops as Dave starts to sing again. The kind of magic you can't recreate in a studio.

We talk about the decision to record this way and the leap of faith he took by travelling to the other side of the world to do so with producer Mark Lang. We talk about co-writing Vincent Coleman with his dear friend, the late Bruce Guthro. And we get into the time Stompin’ Tom Connors hired him after what might be the most unconventional audition in Canadian music history.

Wanna get in touch?

Send an email to ⁠⁠whenwewakeradio@gmail.com⁠⁠

Or find me on Instagram

⁠@whenwewakeradio ⁠& ⁠@theandrewshaver⁠

⁠When We Wake with Andrew Shaver⁠ is written, hosted, edited, and produced by ⁠⁠Andrew Shaver⁠ of ⁠Clever Hopes⁠⁠. The weekly radio broadcast is syndicated across Canada, from Newfoundland to British Columbia.

Theme song Got You by ⁠Noah Reid⁠

I met Rebekah Hawker about two weeks ago at Folk Alliance in New Orleans and within minutes we were laughing like we’d known each other for years.

What starts as a conversation about surviving conference adrenaline, and then inevitable crash that follows, turns into something much deeper. We talk about growing up in a church community, about the grief she felt after her mom passed away, moving back in with dad on the family farm, journaling and building an inner world as an artist.

And Rebekah shares the story behind “Quit My Habit,” the song I first heard her she sing in a noisy room in New Orleans that somehow brought the whole place to a hush. That is, when they weren’t singing along.

Also… we take a small but important detour into Linda Ronstadt.

rebekahhawker.com

Wanna get in touch?

Send an email to ⁠⁠whenwewakeradio@gmail.com⁠⁠

Or find me on Instagram

⁠@whenwewakeradio ⁠& ⁠@theandrewshaver⁠

⁠When We Wake with Andrew Shaver⁠ is written, hosted, edited, and produced by ⁠⁠Andrew Shaver⁠ of ⁠Clever Hopes⁠⁠. The weekly radio broadcast is syndicated across Canada, from Newfoundland to British Columbia.

Theme song Got You by ⁠Noah Reid⁠

My guests today are Tim Chaisson and Jake Charron from the genre-bending, Juno Award-winning, musical trailblazers from Prince Edward Island, The East Pointers.

Their new album, Schoonertown, is rooted friendships that stretch decades, small-town life, and the long road of making music together. It’s also shaped by loss. The record carries the presence of their late bandmate and friend Koady Chaisson, who was also Tim’s cousin, and whose spirit is felt all the way through these songs.

What’s striking is that Schoonertown isn’t a quiet record. It’s joyful, rhythmic, and built for rooms full of people. It's music that celebrates connection, memory, and the act of showing up for one another. And that's entirely by design.

Tim and Jake joined me for a generous, wide-ranging conversation about home, tradition, collaboration, and carrying someone with you as the music keeps moving forward.

@theeastpointers

Wanna get in touch?

Send an email to ⁠whenwewakeradio@gmail.com⁠

Or find me on Instagram

@whenwewakeradio & @theandrewshaver

When We Wake with Andrew Shaver is written, hosted, edited, and produced by ⁠Andrew Shaver of Clever Hopes⁠. The weekly radio broadcast is syndicated across Canada, from Newfoundland to British Columbia.

Theme song Got You by Noah Reid

On today’s episode of When We Wake, I’m talking with Eric Duquette and Jena GoGo AKA Duke and Goldie - a duo whose entire story basically starts with a Craigslist ad in Toronto.

Jena put out a call for a guitar player and, perhaps unsurprisingly, a whole host of guys answered, but it was Eric who fit the bill.

So the two bonded over a shared love of Motown and Radiohead, played in a band together, fell in love, fell out of that earlier band and eventually spun all of it into Duke and Goldie.

It’s been a journey that’s taken Jenna from the West Coast to Toronto, Eric from east to Toronto, and now both of them to Vancouver, where they’ve made their home. And, where they recorded their new album, Romance and Ramblin', in the basement bunker at CBC.

We get into how this all unfolded, how they write, and how the partnership, musical and otherwise, keeps shaping the sound.

@dukeandgoldie

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Send an email to ⁠whenwewakeradio@gmail.com⁠

Or find me on Instagram

@whenwewakeradio & @theandrewshaver

When We Wake with Andrew Shaver is written, hosted, edited, and produced by ⁠Andrew Shaver⁠. The weekly radio broadcast is syndicated across Canada, from Bonne Bay to Prince George.

Theme song Got You by Noah Reid

Boy Golden is the oh-so-cool Rock’n'Roll alter ego of the Winnipeg-based multi-instrumentalist/producer/songwriter extraordinaire, Liam Duncan. In today’s chat, we get into the origin story of that alter ego, but before we do that, we chat about the music.

We kick it off talking about Suffer, the lead single from his forthcoming album Best of Our Possible Lives (due in February 2026). The song went all the way to #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Charts in Canada. But didja know, it hit #1 weeks before it was announced at #1? Naturally, we get into the strangeness of how that happened.

We also talk about what radio success means in 2025 and why the song might be having a tougher time finding a foothold in the US.

We chat about Liam’s unusual path into songwriting. He started out on the business side of music, as a teenager, and came to writing songs, as he puts it “a little late” in the game…at the ripe old age of 21.

We talk about recording to tape, and about the time he literally carried those tapes through airports to get them mastered, refusing to let them through the X-Ray machines.

We discuss why he chose to work with a producer (for the first time) on this new Boy Golden album and how he felt about the process. Spoiler, he loved it.

And finally Liam tells me why he finds making music, well, a little embarrassing.

Boy Golden

Wanna get in touch?

Send an email to ⁠whenwewakeradio@gmail.com⁠

Or find me on Instagram

@whenwewakeradio & @theandrewshaver

When We Wake with Andrew Shaver is written, hosted, edited, and produced by ⁠Andrew Shaver⁠. The weekly radio broadcast is syndicated across Canada, from Newfoundland to British Columbia.

Theme song Got You by Noah Reid

Jill Barber is back with a brand-new holiday album, A Holly Jolly Jill Barber Christmas. An album that includes a handful of the classics you’d expect, some lesser known treasures and a couple of originals, all of it shaped alongside her Grammy-nominated producer and pal Drew Jurecka.

Jill’s been living in a Christmas mindset, replete with its bittersweet mix of nostalgia and hope, since February. So it’s high time she hit the road to bring her special brand of holiday cheer to folks from Toronto, east.

West of Toronto, sorry to say, you’ll be waiting til next year.

In our chat we talk all about the album, the tour, her memories of Christmases past, her evolution as a songwriter and, of course, I can hardly chat with Jill Barber without talking about her brother, Matthew Barber, so, Jill tells about why she believes in a thing called blood harmony.

@jillbarber

Wanna get in touch?

Send an email to ⁠whenwewakeradio@gmail.com⁠

Or find me on Instagram

@whenwewakeradio & @theandrewshaver

When We Wake with Andrew Shaver is written, hosted, edited, and produced by ⁠Andrew Shaver⁠. The weekly radio broadcast is syndicated across Canada, from Newfoundland to British Columbia.

Theme song Got You by Noah Reid