INUVIK - For Leanne Goose, it was time to return to her roots - and with that journey came international recognition.

Singer-songwriter Leanne Goose has been nominated for a 2011 Native American Indigenous Image Award in the category for Outstanding Country Album. Goose said the album was a chance to get reacquainted with her roots and give the people of Inuvik an album that is for them. - Andrew Livingstone/NNSL photo

The renowned singer-songwriter's third studio album, Got You Covered, is getting recognition for its down-home country sound and was recently nominated for a Native American Indigenous Image Award for best country album.

"I'm pretty proud, it was unexpected," Goose said. "You see the advertising come out for award shows and you don't really expect if you submit you'll be nominated. There is so much great talent out there and to be selected as one of the people to be nominated, I'm quite happy and very proud."

Goose grew as a musician through playing at community events like the annual Muskrat Jamboree and talent shows, essentially any event where musicians were asked to perform.

Got You Covered is an album for all the people that have been there to support her through her career, she said.

She felt compelled to return to her country roots after releasing Anywhere, her first full-length album - a piece of work she said was a full-on rock album that garnered her more than a half-dozen nominations at the 2008 Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards and Aboriginal Peoples Choice Awards.

"I got a lot of e-mails and comments from people who wanted to hear the old country songs and they started to give me lists of the songs they wanted to hear when I played shows," she said, adding eight of the tracks on Got You Covered were the most requested songs by her fans. "You have to go back and acknowledge the people who got you here. They've Got You Covered is a tribute to home and my friends and family and supporters, and I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing today if it wasn't for them.

"It's those connections I can never forget and I'm eternally grateful for."

With the success of her most recent album, Goose is already planning her next release.

She was recently busy writing a tune about her mother's residential school experiences in the late 1950s.

"She told me the story about when the plane came to get her," she said. "I had the first line and then I had the second and then I had 12 lines.

Goose said her ideas for songs stew in her mind and then something just clicks and then it pours out onto paper.

It'll start with something, I'll hear coffee perking or the phone will ring or someone will say something and it'll have a rhythm to it," she said.

The yet-to-be-titled album posed a chance for her to return to writing after spending some time living in Winnipeg, where she took music lessons and searched for more exposure.

"It's different when you live up here," she said. "There is a lot of homegrown talent. To move into a bigger arena and you're in competition for gigs and you're trying to make sure you get airplay and exposure and you're making enough money to put bread on the table, it's a hard go.

"I wanted to get back to writing. I've been home for a year and I've got three songs that I feel are strong and I've got five or six in the works and hope to have the new album recorded sometime in the fall."

Goose is hoping to attend the awards ceremony in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on April 29 and is fundraising toward it.

"It's an expensive trip to make so I'm hoping I can raise enough money to go," she said.

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