Calgary’s genre-blurring ensemble Little Brown Jug Brass return with a moving collaboration, teaming up with celebrated Métis singer-songwriter Ashley Ghostkeeper for the heartfelt single “My North Star Home,” released ahead of their upcoming holiday album Holiday Spirits (November 28, 2025). Known for bringing brass-powered joy to jazz, funk, and roots, LBJB shifts into more intimate emotional territory here, still warm, still inclusive, but with a deeper, ancestral resonance. For Ghostkeeper, the song is profoundly personal, as she wrote it in memory of her grandfather, the guiding “North Star” who shaped her family’s home and history. Sung from her mother’s perspective, it becomes a tribute to generational love, legacy, and the grief that never fully leaves, yet always lights the way forward.
“My North Star Home” begins like a soft prayer. A slow horn swell rises, glowing in amber warmth before Ghostkeeper’s rich, deep, steady, controlled vocal enters, carrying oceans beneath the surface. She sings low and solemn, as if handling memories with both hands. Then earthy percussion rumbles in, rumbling low beats grounding her voice while percussion shimmers and jitters gently around her.
Each verse reveals more of her father-figure’s presence, with long nights, hard work, and love that built walls into a home. You can tell she’s holding back, because her voice holds back so much vibrato and depth and sonorous, rich voice, as if keeping emotion contained—but slowly the lid lifts. Her voice swells, trailing into the sky, reaching higher with the chorus: “When I’m all alone, I look up… I see you.”
By the final refrain, her voice rises confidently toward the heavens: not just longing, but knowing. Home is a star that never stops showing you the way.
Beautifully performed and culturally resonant, “My North Star Home” tenderly reminds us that love outlives loss, and that sometimes the brightest light comes from those no longer beside us, but forever above.
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Review by: Naomi Joan