I met Rebekah Hawker this past January 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

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⁠@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 ⁠[email protected]⁠

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 ⁠[email protected]⁠

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@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 ⁠[email protected]⁠

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 ⁠[email protected]⁠

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

Three time Music Nova Scotia Award winner, Daniel James McFadyen grew up outside of Toronto chasing a ball, not a melody. But somewhere between the rec centre squash courts and the dark and dreary corners of the pubs filled with folk covers, music found him.

His new album, Back to the Country,  was written in a cabin on the east coast and recorded in a cabin cum recording studio on the west coast. It’s raw, nostalgic, and wide open.

Like the places that shaped it.

It's When We Wake with Daniel James McFadyen.

Landmine Tour

@danieljamesmcfadyen

Wanna get in touch?

Send an email to ⁠[email protected]⁠

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

Charlotte Cornfield is one of those songwriters who can make a small moment feel like a revelation.  And speaking of revelations, while I’ve been a fan of Charlotte’s for almost a decade now, going all the way back to her 2106 debut Future Snowbird, in our chat, I learned that Charlotte knew of me years before that even. 

You can imagine my surprise.

I guess, I used to be somebody, you know?

Nah.

Turns out, Charlotte and I have more than a couple handfuls of mutual friends form our shared time in Montreal, but this was our first real conversation.

And it went in many directions. 

In today’s episode we talk about a magical week in September that Charlotte spent at a songwriter retreat in Cork, as well as the friendships and collaborations that have come out of it; her love of the Toronto music scene and, well, for the city itself; we talk a lot about family and what it means to keep creating while raising one.  Charlotte’s daughter, Odette, is now two and a half, and that shift from all-hours songwriting to daycare-scheduled creativity has changed how Charlotte works.

In fact, her new album, due in spring of 2026, was written in the 3 months between Odette starting daycare and Charlotte going into the studio (with an as yet unannounced “dream band”) to record live off the floor, with no headphones and no overdubs. 

We bookend our chat with some live dates she’s playing.

Off the top, the Nowadays Festival in Dartmouth NS October 9, and on the tail end, a show she’s playing  November 12th at Massey Hall in Toronto as part of an incredible lineup celebrating Neil Young’s 80th.

charlottecornfield.com

Wanna get in touch?

Send an email to ⁠[email protected]⁠

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@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

Yukon Blonde has been part of Canada’s indie rock landscape for more than a decade.

They're JUNO-nominated, they've picked up a SOCAN award, they've had tunes placed in shows like Grey’s Anatomy and The Summer I Turned Pretty, they’ve hit the Top 10 at commercial alt radio, and had #1s on the CBC Music Top 20.

Not too shabby.

And they don’t just write great songs. As anyone who has seen them live knows, they are electric , even if they wrote most of their new album on acoustics.

On today's episode I chat with Yukon Blonde's Jeff Innes and Brandon Scott about the band's new album Friendship and Rock’n’Roll.

We get into how they first met; the heavy metal band Jeff stole Brandon away from; their shared love of vintage cameras; their thoughts on AI in the music industry, and why they hope it might push people back toward playing real instruments.

I also asked the two of them what they’d bring with them to the future. Jeff’s answer won’t surprise anyone, but Brandon’s even caught his old bud Jeff off guard.

And of course, we chat about the songs from the new record, an album that really does live up to its name: friendship and rock’n’roll.

@yukonblonde

Wanna get in touch?

Send an email to ⁠[email protected]⁠

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@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

He grew up wanting to be an inventor. Turns out he is.

Jake Nicoll builds the places and the tools he records with right down to the microphones, compressors, and the bits in between.  He moved to Newfoundland with his twin brother and one of his sisters for university and to make music, and he never stopped tinkering. 

When the pandemic hit, he went to his family farm in Guelph ON for what he thought would be two weeks. It became a year and a half of sustenance farming with Dad.

Since early 2024 he’s released two albums with companion EPs — the homespun Lonely Mission and the synth-sparked Saturn Returns — jumping styles without losing the heart. 

Today we talk about his time on the farm, his studio builds, his proclivity for a good dumpster dive, and, of course, the music... because there’s lots of it. 

Overachiever? Maybe. Or perhaps, he's simply built for it. 

Wanna get in touch?

Send an email to ⁠[email protected]⁠

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

A sense of home is at the heart of Ewan Currie’s songwriting, and after a lifetime of moving around, he’s landed on the East Coast, kinda like me.

But, I’ll put my cards on the table and admit that, ok, sure, folks might be a little more excited by his move than mine. I get it.

Ewan Currie is the frontman of one of Canada’s favourite Rock'n'Roll bands, The Sheepdogs, who, of course, were thrust into the spotlight in 2011 after winning Rolling Stone’s "Do You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star?" contest and becoming the first unsigned band to don the magazine's cover.

Since then, they have climbed to the top of the Canadian charts and have secured their place as one of this country’s premiere live acts. In fact, Ewan thinks their live show is the best it’s ever been.

In our chat today we talk about why Ewan is pretty sure that Rock'n'Roll may have peaked somewhere between 1968 and 1974, why Halifax might just be Canada’s Rock'n'Roll capital, and about how moving around as a kid shaped his perspective of the world. Ewan also shares how how his father influenced his love of music and ultimate his career path. 

In June, Ewan released Strange Vacation, his second solo album, just in time for his move to Nova Scotia into a house up on a hill a stone's thrown from mine.

It's great to have new music from a new neighbour.

@ewanjcurrie

Wanna get in touch?

Send an email to ⁠[email protected]⁠

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