B.C. / Metis singer-songwriter’s latest displays musical growth while paying tribute to her family roots
After releasing the internationally acclaimed EP Radios And Buffalos in 2024, multi-talented Indigenous recording artist Liv Wade officially returns today with a new five-song collection entitled Fur Queen. Overall, it displays Liv’s wide-ranging musical approach that blends traditional storytelling with soaring modern production.
Fur Queen‘s previously released singles, “Darkest Hour” and “Carolina,” explored similar theme of holding onto hope in challenging times, with the music a product of Liv’s longtime partnership with producer Winston Hauschild, who works out of The Treehouse Studio on Bowen Island, near Vancouver. Other tracks on Fur Queen, “Fall For You” and “Blue House Paint,” offer bold variations of modern pop that fans of Liv’s previous work will be familiar with, but the title track may come as a surprise—a rollicking, fiddle-driven country number that pays tribute to her family’s history in northern Manitoba.
Liv explains,
“This song is a story of my birth mother and her life as a ‘Fur Queen,’ as part of the Northern Manitoba Trappers Festival. It was the first piece of information I gathered when I was legally able to search for my birth family. At that young age, I had no idea about the festival or what or who a ‘Fur Queen’ was. But because my birth mother was one, it pushed me to discover further information about my Metis heritage. I travelled to The Pas in my early twenties, and had the honour of attending a Trappers Festival, which was so much more than I ever imagined. So with this song, I hope to share some of what life is like for many in northern communities across Canada. And of course, my love for land and our connection to it.”
Absorbing the music of Canadian icons such as Leonard Cohen, Ron Sexsmith, Kathleen Edwards and Sarah Harmer from a young age, by her teens Liv was combining all of it with her Royal Conservatory of Music studies, which soon earned her residencies at the prestigious Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity and Manitoba’s Indigenous Music Program. Her debut studio record, and first collaboration with Hauschild, Resilience, was released in 2017, earning her a nomination for Best New Artist at the 2018 Indigenous Music Awards.
Since then, Liv Wade has continued to build a reputation as a powerful voice within the Indigenous Music Renaissance with each new collection of songs. She is now poised to add Fur Queen to that impressive catalogue, and broaden her reach across Canada and around the world.