2026 Terra Spencer

Bad ideas, VCRs, crumbling factories, hairy dogs, questionable tattoos...all are fair game for funeral director-turned-songwriter (and 2025 Music Nova Scotia Entertainer of the Year) Terra Spencer. And the songs are good ones, judging from the accolades her four albums have received, and from the caliber of collaborators like Ben Caplan, Dave Gunning, and David Francey, who welcomed Terra as a co-writer and performer on his JUNO-winning album 'The Breath Between'. Cinematic storytelling is a hallmark of many great Canadian folk songwriters, but in Terra's case, it is charged with the wood-paneled '70s warmth of Elton John, Karen Carpenter, and Jackson Browne. As a fun-loving and fearless solo performer, Terra has played some of Canada's most renowned festival stages, including Mariposa, Stan Rogers Folk Festival, and Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival, where her Maritime waltz "Lunenburg Moon" has become an unofficial anthem. Think Steve Poltz and Carole King's East Coast cousin.

Terra grew up as an only child on the banks of the Avon River with the world’s highest tides, surrounded by country music. As a shy teen, she took refuge in her grandparents' basement where she played Broadway show tunes on a battleship upright piano, learning guitar in secret from her granddad's Chet Atkins records. Her passion for songwriting came much later, after being hired on as a backup singer while scooping ice cream at a festival by country performer Ryan Cook. Their travels set the stage for Terra's solo debut in 2018, blooming into a career that quickly overshadowed her funeral ambitions, taking her across Canada and to the US, UK, and Germany, often in the company of the cream of Canadian folk.

Terra's solo fourth album 'Sunset' was named the 2024 Penguin Eggs Roots Music Canada Critics' Choice Album of the Year (alongside Julian Taylor's 'Pathways') and Music Nova Scotia Folk/Roots Recording of the Year, and garnered her ECMA and Canadian Folk Music Award nominations for Solo Artist and English Songwriter of the Year. It features guests from East to West, including Matt Andersen and Stephen Fearing. Although her butterscotch voice, deft fingerstyle guitar, and gospel-charged piano make her a formidable musician, it's her onstage ease, spirited spontaneity, and crackling East Coast wit that make each show feel like a knee-to-knee conversation in a room of 5 or 500, on either side of the Atlantic.

“The real deal.” - Ron Sexsmith

“Terra Spencer is a sparklingly intelligent writer, open-hearted, insightful and eloquent. As natural a poet as ever put pen to paper and a soul as beautiful as her melodies would imply. ” - David Francey

The Top 100 Canadian Albums - Bob Mersereau - Thursday, October 6, 2022 -
MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: TERRA SPENCER & BEN CAPLAN - OLD NEWS
First, it's a fascinating collaboration. These are all Spencer's songs who, in her short career, has already proven to be a writer of substance and rich emotion. Caplan, with his dramatic, Waitsian deep voice, is well-cast as lead singer on a couple of the songs requiring an older male, and as a duet partner elsewhere. He's also the album's producer, a first for him in that role.
Second, it's tremendous. Spencer has outdone her previous gem, 2020's multiple award-winner Chasing Rabbits, her songwriting even more outstanding. One beauty follows another, no two are alike musically or thematically. She has a wonderful perspective on people, a huge tenderness, and seemingly limitless empathy. Yes, it's sentimental as all get out, filled with old people, old dogs, old teachers, and lovers parting as friends, but the songs will melt the hardest hearts.

Caplan sings "VHS," a widower revisiting his box of tapes, finding the wedding day video. On "Harry," goes wonderfully over the top as a crooner paying tribute to "A good boy, Harry, a real good boy," as he bids him farewell when he enters the nursing home. It's the same character as we met in "VHS," a lovely touch. Spencer takes the mic back for "At Your Service," sung from the perspective of a funeral director, about meeting another widower, and later burying him. It's matter-of-fact in its delivery, just the meeting and the funeral, but it tears at your heart in the best possible way.

Later on, Caplan returns for a couple of duets with classic themes, performed in classic styles. "Maybe" sees two parting lovers debating meeting again, and the perils of such: "A wound is all that deeper when inflicted by a friend." Sung with only Spencer's piano for accompaniment, it could be a missing Rodgers & Hart show tune. "Good Friends" also has that Great American Songbook quality but is a cheerful buddy number, complete with a Dixieland horn middle. This one has a chance to be in the next great Doris Day-Rock Hudson movie.

I suppose both Spencer and Caplan are throwbacks, two songsmiths who strive to get as close to your heartstrings as possible while relishing the craft of it, the performance, the arrangement, and the invention. Funny how it all sounds so fresh and important. I think we'll always need good friends like this.

Terra Spencer

Sunday April 26, 2:00pm