Singer/songwriter Jon Bryant channels brotherly love and regret into a soul-stirring folk reverie on “Take Heart” (ft. Rose Betts), a breathtakingly beautiful song about making amends, choosing presence, and trusting that the healing power of showing up can still reach across years of distance.

Stream: “Take Heart” – Jon Bryant, Rose Betts

Take the wheel, take a breath, and take heart…

Regret has a way of softening as it ages, not because the wound disappears, but because love finally learns how to reach back through it.

The years that once made distance feel natural can, with time, begin to ache like absence: The brother left behind, the door kept closed, the younger version of ourselves too busy performing coolness to recognize what we were losing. On “Take Heart,” Jon Bryant reaches into that ache with open hands, transforming old guilt into a warm, radiant act of repair. Featuring Rose Betts, the song is a softly stirring folk reverie about growing up, looking back, and choosing – with tenderness and intention – to come home to the people we once kept at arm’s length.

Two steps ahead
Not looking back
No time to waste
No room to spare

Two steps behind
Fell through the cracks
I didn’t know I left you there
But I got lost in the crowd
I’m coming back for you now
It won’t be long so keep holding on

Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Take Heart,” the breathtakingly beautiful new single from Canadian folk singer/songwriter Jon Bryant’s forthcoming album Harbour (set to release November 27, 2026 via Nettwerk Music Group). A gifted storyteller with over 15 years of songs behind him, Bryant has spent his career carving out space for emotional transparency, rich acoustic textures, and warm, soul-searching melodies. Across five full-length albums and multiple EPs, the Nova Scotia native has built a body of work rooted in vulnerability and connection – music that feels lived-in, unvarnished, and deeply, undeniably human. Last year’s Therapy Notes found him wrestling with grief, growth, mortality, fatherhood, and the fleeting nature of life, turning messy inner reckonings into tender folk songs that felt like pages torn from a private journal.

With Harbour, Bryant recommits to the folk foundations that first made his music feel so intimate and immediate: Acoustic instruments, clear arrangements, and songwriting that places feeling over spectacle. Co-produced with longtime friend Brennan Aerts and written as Bryant prepared to move back to Nova Scotia with fatherhood on the horizon, the album carries the weight of a homecoming – a return to roots, to family, to self, and to the kind of honest, human connection that has always sat at the heart of his work. “Take Heart” brings that spirit into focus, transforming a deeply personal reckoning with regret, brotherhood, and old distance into a luminous plea for repair.

Built on sweet acoustic fingerpicking, lush piano, gentle drums, and two voices that seem to glow from the inside out, “Take Heart” carries the emotional weight of an apology and the steady grace of a promise.

Bryant does not just sing from a place of remorse; he sings toward reconnection, offering up memory, pride, ambition, and every last defense in the hope that love might still be waiting on the other side. In reflection, he traces the song’s emotional center back to a younger version of himself – one still learning the difference between self-protection and exclusion, between growing up and leaving people behind.

Take my hockey card collection
Take my Neil Young obsession
Take my shirt, take my board
Take it all
‘Cause I was dumb and trying to fit in
I shut you out, you couldn’t get in
Now I’m wondering
if it’s too damn late to start
So take the wheel
Take a breath and take heart

“‘Take Heart’ is about the way I treated my younger brothers when I was a teen and the way I feel about it looking back,” Bryant tells Atwood Magazine. “It’s about regretting the distance I created – being too cool to let them into my life. This song is my attempt to make amends with my past and move forward with love and intention.”

That ache runs deep for Bryant, who sees “Take Heart” as both apology and offering: A chance to dissolve old walls, honor the people his brothers have become, and give himself back to them without pretense.

“I think for me, it is a representation of how I’ve come to love and appreciate and respect my brothers, especially my younger brothers, so much as we’ve grown older. I think from many of us with siblings we see them as a freeze frame, usually in their preteen and teenage years when you thought they weren’t cool enough to hang out with you. I think this song reflects the desire to share as much as myself with them as possible, and dissolves any pretense or conceit I once had.”

That desire arrives in the song itself with disarming grace.

“Take Heart” opens in motion – “Two steps ahead / Not looking back / No time to waste / No room to spare” – capturing the restless self-absorption of youth with only a few plainspoken lines. Bryant lets us feel the distance in the forward rush, the refusal to glance over his shoulder, the casual devastation of “I didn’t know I left you there.” By the time he sings, “But I got lost in the crowd / I’m coming back for you now,” the song has already become a confession, its tenderness sharpened by the recognition that absence can be accidental and still leave a mark.

Musically, “Take Heart” meets that reckoning with warmth rather than heaviness. Acoustic guitar fingerpicking gives the song its pulse, delicate and steady, while lush piano and gentle drums fill the room with a soft, golden glow. Bryant’s voice carries the ache of looking back without flinching, and Betts’ presence adds a luminous counterweight – her ethereal tone widening the song’s emotional frame until it feels less like a solo apology and more like a shared prayer for repair. Together, they make regret feel open-hearted, not buried; alive with the hope that love can still move where pride once stood.

Too scared to ask (too scared to ask)
Too soon to say (too soon to say)
We’re holding back, still saving face
My chips are down (my chips are down)
And I’m all in (and I’m all in)
I wish I knew where to begin (ooh)
But I got lost in the crowd
I’m coming back for you now
It won’t be long
So keep holding on

The chorus opens like an offering, each item Bryant gives away carrying the weight of the person he used to be. “Take my hockey card collection / Take my Neil Young obsession / Take my shirt / Take my board / Take it all” feels intimate because the objects are so specific, so authentic to him – the treasured pieces of boyhood, identity, taste, and self-mythology that once may have felt too precious to share. Here, he lays them down freely. The gesture is not grandiose so much as deeply human: If these are the things that built a wall between us, he seems to say, then take them. Take whatever you need. I would rather lose the armor than lose you.

Take my hockey card collection
Take my Neil Young obsession
Take my shirt, take my board
Take it all
I was dumb and trying to fit in
I shut you out you couldn’t get in
Now I’m wondering if it’s
too damn late to start
So take the wheel
Take a breath
And take heart, heart
Take heart, heart

This stunning surrender gives the song its emotional lift. When Bryant admits, “I was dumb and trying to fit in / I shut you out, you couldn’t get in,” the apology lands without varnish or self-defense; it is blunt, tender, and devastating in its simplicity. The question that follows – “Now I’m wondering if it’s too damn late to start” – holds the whole song in its hands, suspended between fear and faith. And then comes the answer, sung not as a cure-all but as a lifeline: “So take the wheel / Take a breath / And take heart.” Bryant and Betts’ voices layer beautifully here, echoing the same sweet, sentimental message such that it feels shared, communal, and full of light. Their harmonies let the light and the love flow in. They make the refrain feel like an open window, a hand on the shoulder, a promise that repair can begin with one honest breath.

“Take Heart” resonates so profoundly because its beauty and grace are active.

It is not a song about rewriting what happened, or pretending those younger selves never caused harm; it is about recognizing that love is a practice, and that presence may be the most meaningful gift we have to give. Bryant cannot recover every missed moment, every closed door, every chance to pull his brothers closer when they needed him, but he can stand before them now with open arms and a welcoming spirit. That intentional choice means everything in this life, and it’s ultimately why this song hits as hard, and as meaningfully, as it does. It’s understanding that whoever we once were does not have to define how we love today – and that being there, being physically and emotionally present to and for our loved ones, really matters. In letting go of pride, shame, and old performance, Bryant makes room for devotion in its simplest, truest form – showing up, staying near, and reminding the people we love that they do not need a reason to lean on us.

Across Harbour, that same devotion stretches outward into a wider portrait of change, connection, and return. Recent singles “Never Not” and “Hard to Be Human” each approach longing from a different angle: The former lingering in the aftermath of love that never fully leaves the body, the latter aching for presence in an age of endless distraction, where friendship, memory, and even our own inner lives can feel swallowed by the scroll. Together with “Take Heart,” they frame Harbour as a record deeply invested in what it means to stay tethered – to old loves, to family, to selfhood, to the people and places that make us feel real.

“This album represents the time frame from which I found out my wife and I were pregnant,” Bryant explains. “The decision to move home for six months so that we and our baby could spend time with my and my wife’s family. It sort of sums up all the feelings of fear ground, moving home, anxiety of not knowing what the next steps are for us, closing a chapter of life and opening up something new, realizing just how insignificant and mundane so many of the things I worried about truly are, and being comfortable and settled in who I am as an artist, husband and father. I think this album can be summed up as a return, to a sound that feels most at home, and a return to my roots in Halifax, Nova Scotia.”

This sense of homecoming makes Harbour as reflective as it is renewing and raw. These songs are not looking backward for nostalgia’s sake; they are reaching for the people, places, and parts of the self that still have the power to steady us. On “Never Not,” Bryant admits that some attachments remain carved into us no matter how much distance, regret, or time we place between ourselves and the past. On “Hard to Be Human,” he names the exhaustion of modern life with striking plainness, longing for the simplicity of “corner stores with five cent dreams” while caught in an “endless stream of content.” “Take Heart” completes that circle by choosing presence over performance, reminding us that being human is not only about feeling deeply, but about answering when love asks us to show up. With so much of Harbour still to unfold, the album promises to be a tender and clear-eyed return to what matters most: Family, memory, rootedness, and the fragile, life-giving work of staying connected.

Ultimately, “Take Heart” is the kind of song that earns its uplift.

Its hope is not naïve, its sweetness is not simple, and its glow comes from all the honesty Bryant and Betts allow into the room: The old hurt, the hard admission, the outstretched hand, the deep relief of realizing love can still have a future even after years of distance. There is true beauty in the way the song makes repair feel possible – not instant, not easy, but real enough to sing toward. Bryant’s latest leaves us with a message worth carrying close: Take the breath, make the call, open the door, and let the people who matter know they still matter.

Stream “Take Heart” exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and dive into our full conversation with Jon Bryant below as he opens up about his return to his folk roots, the life changes that shaped Harbour, collaborating with Rose Betts, reconnecting with family, writing from a place of vulnerability, and the enduring importance of making music that keeps us human.

Take the wheel. Take a breath. Take heart – together, Bryant and Betts remind us that there is still time to come back, and there is still love waiting when we do.

Take my rise and recognition
Take my trophies and ambition
Take my cup, take my blood, take it all
If you need someone to lean on
You know you don’t need a reason
Don’t be wondering if it’s too damn late to start
So take the wheel
Take a breath
Take heart

— —

:: stream/purchase Take Heart here ::

:: connect with Jon Bryant here ::

— —

Stream: “Take Heart” – Jon Bryant, Rose Betts

A CONVERSATION WITH JON BRYANT

Jon Bryant: I guess I want them to know how grateful I am that they would even give my music or listen in the first place let alone come back to it. In this ever increasingly attention devoid society, it’s become so vividly apparent that I should never take that for granted. As far as my project goes, the major changes, aside from my brief detours into pop and R’n’B, are fundamentally my joyous return to folk roots, and the fact that I’m now a dad navigating the world with a small family by my side. I’m putting my absolute best work forward as a midlevel folk artist desperately seeking to create art that is so honest and vulnerable that it makes me uncomfortable.

Jon Bryant: I really love Sam Fender and the work he has done w Adam Granduciel. I’m also diggin’ flaherty brotherhood, Tyler ballgame, Hiss golden messenger and Emmit Rhodes to name a few. I’m most excited about the music I’m making right now because it feels like a long awaited return to the sound that I love and feel so at home making. The kind of folk that I think feels most like “me” – or at least, who I am right now.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, this album represents the time frame from which I found out my wife and I were pregnant, too. The decision to move home for six months so that we and our baby could spend time with my and my wife’s family. It sort of sums up all the feelings of fear ground, moving home, anxiety of not knowing what the next steps are for us, closing a chapter of life and opening up something new, realizing just how insignificant and mundane so many of the things I worried about truly are, and being comfortable and settled in who I am as an artist, husband and father. I think this album can be summed up as a return, to a sound that feels most at home, and a return to my roots in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Jon Bryant: I think for me, it is a representation of how I’ve come to love and appreciate and respect my brothers, especially my younger brothers, so much as we’ve grown older. I think for many of us with siblings, we see them as a freeze frame, usually in their preteen and teenage years when you thought they weren’t cool enough to hang out with you. I think this song reflects the desire to share as much as myself with them as possible, and dissolves any pretense or conceit I once had.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I was fortunate enough to join a writing camp that took me to Mexico City where I got to meet some of the other incredible artists that I share a label with. One of which was English singer/songwriter Rose Betts, who I got to write with on the first day. We hit it off right away. I had the most fun writing and hanging out over the weekend.

On one of the nights, we ventured out with some of the Mexican artists that we met who took us around the city and eventually ended up at an underground art gallery show with a live band. At one point Rose and I got up and played some cover ourselves. In the end, we came away from that weekend as good friends and with an amazing song.

Jon Bryant: I hope listeners walk away, saying something like, “Damn that was like… the best album I’ve ever heard” or, “Wow, I didn’t know Jon Bryant’s music was that good.”

I think at the end of therapy notes. I was afraid and convinced that I had nothing left to say or write about. I didn’t know I had more in the tank, but I’m so, so grateful that I listened to my gut, kept going, and discovered an incredibly kind and supportive community of listeners over this past year, who taught me that no matter how seemingly hopeless and lost I feel, there’s still a place for my music in this world and billions of people who I think need to hear it.

— —

:: stream/purchase Take Heart here ::

:: connect with Jon Bryant here ::

— —

Stream: “Take Heart” – Jon Bryant, Rose Betts

— — — —

Connect to Jon Bryant on
Facebook, 𝕏, TikTok, Instagram

Connect to Rose Betts on
Facebook, 𝕏, TikTok, Instagram

Discover new music on Atwood Magazine

 © Aamir Ullah

:: Stream Jon Bryant ::