Hidden Track

For over 40 years, Canadian blues rock singer Colin James has cemented his double-platinum status with hits like "Five Long Years", "Voodoo Thing", and "Just Came Back". Now, the illustrious musician reflects on his journey with the debut of his book: Playing the Changes: A Musician's Memoir .   In this episode of Hidden Track, Colin James delves into the inspiration and his process for bringing t...

This episode wraps up our third annual collaboration with Music Yukon. This session of the Hidden Track podcast brings in two more artists from Canada's north. Ryan McNally and Claire Ness & The Rubies are the featured artists for this edition of the podcast. First up is Ryan McNally. His distinctive brand of timeless roots-based music draws on his time growing up in a beautiful part of rural Sout...

This episode marks the start of our third annual collaboration with Music Yukon, where we feature the talented Northern artists they support in heading down to perform as part of the Edmonton International Fringe Festival. We're starting off strong with a two-part episode featuring two amazing Yukon-based acts! Up first is John from Dawson, whose fun brand of boom-bap hip-hop has made him a CKUA a...

Valerie June's music is grounded in blues, country, Appalachian folk, gospel, and other veins of earthy roots music; but at the same time, it reaches for the heavens. She's been deeply rooted in rural Tennessee her whole life, yet her music has also been informed by being based in Brooklyn for many years, and by travelling prolifically all across this world. As Valerie chronicles in "My Life Is a...

How do you celebrate the 10th anniversary of an album that went gold, won a Juno Award, represents an artistic breakthrough, and seemingly foretold the deeply divided, disconnected world we inhabit today? Well, if you're the band July Talk , you take those songs on a cross-country tour, you record the whole album again, ten years later...and you release the secret second entire album that you reco...

The band Broken Social Scene is a group that's all about creative friendships, inspiring and building upon each other's contributions, and collective joy through sharing music on as big a scale as possible. Their greatly anticipated new album Remember the Humans is the first in more than 20 years to feature the production work of Dave Newfeld. Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew took some time backst...

This episode of the Hidden Track podcast features Cat Clyde, a singer, songwriter and guitar player who has been making music for about 10 years.   CKUA's Grant Stovel chats with this young artist on the stage of the Drumheller Legion during the Cold Bones Festival as she is about to release her 2026 album Mud Blood Bone.   In this laid-back session, she gets into the music on the new album, being...

Just like their music, a visit with East Pointers is always profound conversation — but feels just like a kitchen party!  There were, initially, three East Pointers when this band started a dozen years ago. Tim Chaisson, his cousin Koady Chaisson, and their great friend Jake Charron, were the key members of the band. The band and their community suffered an unthinkable loss when Koady died unexpec...

Cradled By the Waves is the title of Jenn Grant's wildly creative new stage show — a live multimedia expression of the music found on her latest album, Queen of the Strait. It's about family, life, death, art, relationships, nostalgia, home, love, heartbreak, and how, as she sings on the album's opening number called "Jim Cuddy Dress," "Nothing that's real ever fades."    It's hard to decide wheth...

While she's been releasing singles and EPs since the beginning of the 2020s,  Katie Tupper  has just released her debut record. She may be in her mid-20s, but Katie's been an artist to watch for many years already. This full-length album provides her with the space to stretch her musical boundaries, build on her very personal approach to songcraft, and venture into some new sonic and groove territ...

Season 7 of the Hidden Track podcast launches with a conversation and performance by Edmonton duo Jed & the Valentine. Maria Khaner and Jonah Morris were dating two years before they started writing songs together. They released their first album Awake, in 2024 and their 2025 album In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb, landed on CKUA's top 100! Maria and Jonah's intertwining harmonies go from soaring t...

Twas the season of giving at fair CKUA  So we gathered some artists, for a Hidden Track Holiday!  In the music library they played, bringing songs of good cheer  To help us close the sixth season, another great year!     They shared festive tall tales and holiday fables  As well as what they love most on their Christmas turntables  So keep a glow in your heart when it's coldest and darkest,  As we...

It's Part Four of Hidden Track's collaboration with Music Yukon.  In this Hidden Track Session, we visit with a trio of artists who amply demonstrate the phenomenally wide spectrum of music-makers who call the Yukon home: John from Dawson's dynamic rap; the piano artistry of singer-songwriter Declan O'Donovan; and the majestic folk stylings of Caleb Tomlinson & the Perseids.  CREDITS Host: Grant S...

In this episode of the Hidden Track podcast, we meet Canadian rapper Shadrach Kabango , better known as Shad . He has a new album, Start Anew , which hooks you in with songs exploring important and universal questions surrounding social, environmental, and cultural sustainability; passing the world along to the next generation. CREDITS Host: Grant Stovel Associate Producer: Scott Zielsdorf Executi...

Music Yukon returns to the Hidden Track podcast for another year of collaborations! The music of the north is the focus of this episode with performances from Electric Lemonade; Jamaican-born longtime New Yorker, now Yukon-dwelling rapper/ beatmaker/ indie rocker Ryan O'Neil; and the celebrated soulful singer-songwriter Hendrika. These sessions are once again part of a larger collaborative project...

Musician, singer, and producer, Yves Jarvis remains connected to the music community in Calgary.  In this Story episode of the Hidden Track podcast, you'll learn all about his connections to his old home province. All you need to do is listen to the title track from his album All Cylinders, which describes a road trip through Southern Alberta's beautiful foothills. He's an interesting case of a un...

Hailing from Arkansas, Willi Carlisle is a grassroots folk musician who passed through Alberta in summer 2025, touring concert halls and theatres on a bill with Sierra Ferrell , followed by folk music festivals in Calgary, Canmore and Edmonton. This was all on the strength of his 2025 release, the self-produced new album Winged Victory . He stopped by CKUA studios, bringing with him his banjo, gui...

Before arriving on the global stage,  Peter Dreimanis - also known as Peter Dreams - grew up here in Alberta, falling in love with the arts in the vibrant Edmonton indie scene, becoming passionately involved at an early age in both music and film.   After more than a dozen years co-fronting the platinum-selling, multi-JUNO winning rock band July Talk, he put out his own debut album in 2025, a much...

Twenty-five years ago, Eon Sinclair and Jay Malinowski met by chance while moving into the same student dormitory. The ska/roots/reggae band that they would form emerged from Kingston – not the one in Jamaica, but the one in Ontario, home to Queens University. Eon and Jay had envisioned very different futures for themselves before Bedouin Soundclash took off, turning them into Juno Award winners a...

In 2007, Canadian-born country & soul singer/songwriter Tami Neilson moved to New Zealand to marry the love of her life. In this Hidden Track Story, she shares that journey and her dreams of joining the galaxy of true country stars. Neilson's new album, Neon Cowgirl , is inspired by experiences touring North America over recent years — including the title track, which pays tribute to a genuine gia...

Blues and roots musician Steve Marriner is an accomplished singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist. In the spring of 2025, he brought all that talent and his band to the Beresh Arts Den at CKUA to launch his new album, Hear My Heart .   This episode of the Hidden Track podcast case was captured live, and you will hear this artist pour his heart out for a rapt audience of CKUA commun...

For six seasons we at CKUA have had the opportunity to connect with a wide range of inspired artists, from Albertan expat sensation Feist, to folk/punk firebrand Frank Turner, multi-JUNO Award winning rock band July Talk and homegrown hip-hop great Cadence Weapon, to name a few! For episode 100 of Hidden Track, we cycle back to the guest who joined us for episode one — two albums later,  multiple...

A few years ago, Calgary musician Reuben Bullock invited the band the Bullhorn Singers to the stage at the Calgary Stampede. This sparked a collaboration which led the musicians to form Reuben and the Bullhorn Singers.   Now they have debut album called All These Roads.   In this episode of the Hidden Track podcast, they will share music and stories, and you'll hear a performance recorded live at...

Amy Millan is a Montreal-based artist who has been working at a full-on sprint pace with her main band Stars for more than two decades. She's also kept herself busy as a prolific contributor to Broken Social Scene. He musical life includes numerous collaborations. But this spring, at long last, Amy Millan released her first solo album in fifteen years, I Went to Find You .   In this Hidden Track S...

Rose Cousins is an artist who seems to possess amazing access to pure feeling. She is capable of heartbreaking tenderness one moment, and side-splitting hilarity the next. On her new album, Conditions of Love Vol. 1, she explores a full range of emotions, and s he re- connects with the piano, an instrument she first played as a child. In the newest episode of the Hidden Track podcast, Rose Cousins...