MAREN ORD
Sat, Dec 20 (7pm - 9pm)
The Sidetrack Café (10333 - 112 St.)

What do you get when you take an acoustic-guitar wielding, radio-friendly, teenaged pop-princess and toss her together with a middle-aged, slightly round-around-the-waist classic Canadian rocker? Only Maren Ord knows for sure, but come this summer it seems the whole country is going to be let in on the answer to this brow-perking riddle.

Ord, now 22, burst onto the Canadian soundscape at the tender age of 16 after winning a number of local songwriting competitions, earning herself an opening spot in Lilith Fair, and scoring a deal with Vancouver-based Nettwerk Records. Ord recently parted ways with her management at Nettwerk and is out shopping her new voice, new songs, and new attitude with the help of The Guess Who/BTO heavyweight, Randy Bachman.

"I wouldn’t say that I had much of a choice when I left my record deal, but it’s really been a blessing in disguise for me. Right now I’m recording at Saltspring Island, BC with Randy Bachman, and it’s exciting," Ord explains in her distinctive, sugar-sweet voice.

The two, who met through a mutual family friend, rendezvoused in Utah–where Ord had been living for the past year–and instantly formed a musical bond. "We hooked up and just started writing like crazy in a hotel room that he was staying in with his wife," Ord reveals. "He definitely has a lot of wisdom with the industry and how a song works, plus he also has a bit of edge to him because he’s pretty rock n’ roll. It’s been fun trying to incorporate all that into my own songwriting."

Ord says her sound "has definitely changed into something edgier," and although she feels extremely blessed to have been guided by such a renowned writing companion, she isn’t ready to share all her writing credits just yet. "Randy had been trying to get in touch with me for quite some time because he was interested in working with me–he thought I was young, fresh, and had talent. He had faith in me; he helped me progress and that was really nice," Ord remarks. "Still, I really like writing my own things because then it’s mine, and it’s exactly how I want it to turn out; when you are co-writing with another artist it’s more about writing hit songs. I think [the music] can still have passion and feeling, but you don’t feel like you have 100 per cent ownership of it. Even if you put all of your heart into the song, so did somebody else and that makes it more of a partnership, I guess."

Along with a matured sense of how songs work, Ord also seems to have grown up in her role as a professional artist and has, more than ever, come to accept that it takes more than great songwriting to make it in the music business. "Even though all I want to do is be on stage and write, I’ve had to come to terms with the industry: to be a responsible artist you need to know how the business works, and that has been a struggle" Ord discloses.

In January, Ord will begin the new year by heading into the studio fulltime, with Bachman at her side to help produce her latest effort, which she plans to shop to labels, but she is also prepared to release independently if need be. She’s also hoping to assemble a songwriting workshop to help share her newfound wisdom with anyone curious enough to attend. After eight years in the limelight, it seems Edmonton’s favourite acoustic-pop daughter, Maren Ord, is truly all grown up.