Jessie Bird

Jessie Bird is a folk/Americana singer-songwriter from Camrose, Alberta, rooted in traditional country and contemporary folk. Influenced by artists including Emmylou Harris, Caroline Spence, Rose Cousins and Jann Arden, Jessie writes from lived experience and the unexpected turns that shape a life.

Music has been part of Jessie’s life for as long as she can remember, but her path to becoming a recording artist was anything but direct. In 2002, she travelled to Toronto after making the Top 100 of Canadian Idol. When the experience didn’t lead where she had hoped, music gradually took a back seat to the rest of life. She went on to build a career in mental health, raise a family and spend years performing in her community, while the idea of making her own music never completely disappeared.

More than twenty years later, Jessie began writing and recording again. Her debut EP, The Way Love Goes, was released in August 2025 and reached #17 on CKUA’s Top 30. Its five songs introduced a body of work shaped by lived experience, vulnerability and the belief that difficult chapters don’t have to be the end of the story.

In 2026, that next chapter gathered momentum. Jessie was nominated for Country Music Alberta’s Roots Artist of the Year, reached the Final 4 of Calgary’s YYC Songwriter Showdown and won the Alberta Dreams Song Search Grand Prize with “Hope Lives Here,” co-written with Jordan Leden. The song was selected as Alberta Dreams’ official 40th anniversary anthem. That September, Jessie played her first sold-out hometown show in Camrose.

Jessie has performed at festivals, theatres and listening rooms across Alberta, including Beaumont Music Festival, East Coulee Springfest, River Valley Sessions and New Moon Folk Club, where she opened for The Hello Darlins. She has also opened for The Hearts and Carly Reirson. In 2024, she provided backing vocals and musical support for artists at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival’s School of Song, an experience that deepened her connection to Alberta’s folk community and collaborative music-making.

Her first full-length album, Idol Dropout, will be released May 27, 2027. The eight-song album brings Jessie back to the experience that once made her question whether there was a place for her in music. Recorded more than two decades later, it explores what happens when life doesn’t unfold the way you imagined, and what it means to return to something you once gave up on.

For Jessie, hope isn’t about pretending life is easy. It’s about believing there’s still something worth singing for.