From Nova Scotia to Ottawa: Glenn A Johnson Shares Decades of Songwriting in Love and Loss: The Songs I Kept
Glenn A Johnson releases his songwriter’s anthology, Love and Loss: The Songs I Kept, a collection that draws deeply on his Nova Scotia roots and a lifetime of storytelling. Born in Halifax and raised in Liverpool, Glenn carries the spirit of the East Coast in every note—anchored by the pull of the ocean and the resilience of memory.
Though now based in Ottawa, Glenn’s heart remains tied to Nova Scotia’s South Shore. His music blends pop and light rock with folk traditions, carried by themes of longing, healing, and the enduring connection to home.
Produced and released under his label BalzaSteel Music, the songs are built not for spectacle but for connection with other artists and possibly for film and television. Glenn’s compositions are offerings to all listeners from the heart, crafted with honesty and care. Beyond listeners, he hopes to connect with performers who may need tailored pieces lyrically and musically.
The anthology features songs spanning decades of writing, including ‘Back To Nova Scotia,’ a heartfelt ode to his birthplace. With lines like “Nova Scotia skies of tartan blue / No matter where I roam, I’ll come back to you,” the song captures the ache of distance and the comfort of return.
Other tracks highlight different shades of love and struggle. ‘A Beautiful Tragedy’ reflects on relationships fractured by time and memory. ‘Can’t Hang It Up’ is an anthem for perseverance in music itself, acknowledging the hardships of the road while celebrating its healing power. ‘Silence Ain’t Peace’ speaks to justice, trauma, and truth with striking urgency.
Glenn’s journey to this release has been anything but ordinary. A drummer at heart, he composes melodies one-handed due to spinal nerve damage, relying on technology and AI tools to help bring his songs to life.
“I’ve had many of the songs complete inside my head,” Glenn shares, “but only recently have I been able to record them in a way that others can hear and, hopefully, carry forward.”
Despite challenges, Glenn’s work reflects the grit and generosity of Maritime culture. His songs mirror coastal landscapes—at once rough and beautiful, intimate, and expansive. They echo lighthouses, salt air, and the resilience of communities shaped by both hardship and joy.
The anthology continues the thread of his earlier release *Ocean Waves*, blending folk and country flavours with themes of love, memory, and belonging.
With Love and Loss: The Songs I Kept, Glenn A Johnson invites listeners into stories both deeply personal and universally resonant. From tender ballads to unflinching truths, his music carries the salt and soul of the East Coast wherever it travels.
Hi, Glenn! Good to meet you! Care to introduce yourself to the readers for those not familiar with your music?
I’m Glenn A. Johnson, a Canadian songwriter based in Ottawa, though my heart will always belong to Nova Scotia where I grew up. I started out as a drummer, then gradually began writing songs using guitar chords and keyboards to shape melodies. Music has always been a companion, even alongside my other career as a journalist — I worked with The Wall Street Journal, The Canadian Press, and Postmedia, and I still host a Friday radio show on QCCR in Liverpool, N.S.
I write songs that bridge love and loss, longing and healing. They’re personal, but I try to craft them in a way that others can see their own stories inside. My work blends pop hooks with folk-rooted storytelling and a touch of light rock.
Your anthology is called Love and Loss: The Songs I Kept. What made these the songs you “kept,” and what stories do they hold that you felt needed to be shared now?
These songs all began as poems I started writing in my teens. For decades, they lived in notebooks and in my head as unfinished songs. I call them “the songs I kept” because they’re the ones that never left me — chapters of my life drawn from failed relationships, positive achievements, and the people and places that shaped me.
Bringing them into the world wasn’t easy. I live with chronic nerve pain and spinal damage, and a surgery in the 1990s damaged my left hand and vocal cords. Playing instruments became difficult, and I lost much of my singing range. MIDI technology gave me a way to build tracks for instruments I could no longer play. I’d record vocals in a lower octave and transpose them into the right key. Finally, AI helped restore a singing voice I could no longer produce.
That process let me bring these songs to life — from A Beautiful Tragedy, about heartbreak and memory, to Back to Nova Scotia, about longing for home, to Reclaiming My Voice, which reflects my own childhood experience of sexual abuse. That last song is dedicated to voicefound.ca, an Ottawa organization that supports survivors of abuse and trafficking. Some songs are tender love tributes to my wife, Pam — like Love Under the Stars and At Home With You. Others, like Can’t Hang It Up, wrestle with what it means to keep chasing music after setbacks. Together, they form an anthology of chapters from my life.
How does your Nova Scotia upbringing still find its way into your writing even though you’re based in Ottawa?
The ocean is always with me. Growing up in Liverpool on Nova Scotia’s South Shore, the rhythm of the tides, the imagery of waves and harbours — they became part of my creative language. Even in songs not explicitly about home, there’s a maritime sense of nostalgia and resilience. Back to Nova Scotia is the most direct example, but even when I’m writing about love or loss, the coast is there as a backdrop, shaping the way I tell the story.
You’ve written across decades. When you revisit older songs, how do they strike you differently today compared to when you first wrote them?
It’s like opening a diary from long ago. Some songs bring back the emotion exactly as it was, while others feel different with time. When I wrote them, I was often in the middle of the storm — heartbreak, loss, or joy. Now I can see them as part of a bigger arc.
A Beautiful Tragedy, for example, was born out of relationship struggles and memory problems. When I revisit it now, I don’t just hear pain — I hear strength. Reclaiming My Voice is another case where time and reflection gave me the courage to write openly about my childhood trauma. Revisiting these songs now means I can perform them with both honesty and gratitude for having survived and healed.
If listeners take away one thing from Love and Loss: The Songs I Kept, what do you hope it is?
That they’re not alone. Love, grief, trauma, and recovery are things we all share in different ways. These songs are my chapters, but I hope they echo something in the listener’s life too. Whether it’s the heartbreak in A Beautiful Tragedy, the nostalgia in Back to Nova Scotia, or the resilience in Reclaiming My Voice, I want people to feel that their own experiences are understood and honored.