From millwright to musician, Jade Turner turns day job into music career

By day she is a red seal millwright but at night she trades in her wrenches and work boots for a microphone and cowboy boots.

The 30-year-old musician makes her living fixing industrial equipment in Grand Rapids, Man. She uses this job to support her music habit, what Turner didn't realize was how much she was going to love being an industrial mechanic.

"It's a change every day, you're always doing something different. It's not expected of somebody of my size — 5'1" — to be working with all the guys and it really pushed me to want to do that even more, I think," said Turner.

Working one week on and one week off allows Turner the time to develop her music career and invest her paycheque into it.

Her forthcoming album is called North Country, and she has just released the music video for the second single, Worth.

Turner was inspired to write this song about the youth suicide crisis in Pimicikamak Cree Nation. Turner said she remembers feeling suicidal when she was 12-years-old and even attempted to take her own life.

Her mother was a nurse so the family moved around a lot. Turner said she was always the new girl in school, and with her light skin, she was an easy target for bullies.

So she wrote Worth because she wanted to say to young people what she needed to hear when she was young.

"The word 'worth' came into my head. I didn't know my worth, obviously. And these people don't know their worth. So I took that word and wrote the second verse of the song and it just flowed from there," she said.