Catching up with Jackie K’s latest singles
Saskatchewan singer-songwriter Jackie K. released her debut full-lenght album, She’s a Story, back on International Women’s Day March 8, and the concept is pretty cool: it’s all stories about women.
And the latest single is about her! The song is called “I’m the Queen,” and it contrasts the relatively mundane lives of people like us with the guilded lives of the royals. It’s aslo kind of a riot and features a fun video that you can see here:
On the flip side, Jackie previously released “Honour Her Spark,” a devastating song about the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls with all proceeds from it are going to the Battlefords and Area Sexual Assault Centre. You can see that video here.
And then there’s “We Can’t Quit,” released earlier this summer.
It’s a song about the times in relationships when people drive each other crazy —but they don’t leave.
Jackie and her husband, Tom Kroczynski, wrote it last summer after a difficult couple of years inspired them to put together a country duet track that symbolized their enduring commitment to one another.
“We had been smoking cigarettes on and off during the pandemic, and it was time to stop,” Jackie said. “The last few years have been hard [with] so much additional pressure. The song is about making the decision to keep trying to be better but also to know when it’s time to cut each other some slack. Life can be hard enough.”
Jackie and Tom take turns serenading listeners with examples of their bothersome behaviors, then outlining why everything stays the same, even when they try to change for their spouse. But what might separate others hasn’t divided these two – their true vices are each other.
“It’s just a fun country song with more than a little bit of truth telling!” Jackie explained. “Oh, and we did quit smoking, but I still eat too many chips and he’s got a mouth on him!”
“We Can’t Quit” is sandwiched in the center of the album, introducing the complexities many women live with in their relationships.
“She’s eating, he’s swearing, she’s drinking too much beer, he’s smoking – there is frustration amidst the underlying love and support that is there in any relationship,” Jackie said. “We love John Prine’s ‘In Spite of Ourselves’ and used to sing that a lot. We certainly took some cues from his expert songwriting.”
Based in North Battleford, Jackie has represented the big skies of Treaty Six territory for a long time. She often incorporates her love of the prairies and its people into her music, and her creativity has taken her around the world, most recently to Ireland in January 2023 to showcase at Your Roots Are Showing with Tom.
When she isn’t writing or performing, Jackie is teaching. Jackie teaches band and guitar to high school students at North Battleford Comprehensive High School, paying it forward to help the next generation express themselves through sound.
