At age 47, Jann Arden feels free at last.

Thus the title of her new album, Free, her first original studio record in five years, and 10th overall. It went on sale last week.

"(My manager Bruce Allen) wanted me to really think about an album title that spoke a lot about change," says the Calgary singer-songwriter, who plays a lengthy string of Canadian dates starting next month, including

Jan. 27-28 at Massey Hall.

"(The title Free) is not the most original thing in the world, but it's a great word. And it's certainly a word fitting for the times that we're living in right now. I mean, everyone's looking for their own version of freedom, I guess, from their jobs or their relationships or how they feel about themselves."

Since releasing her 2007 covers album, Uncover Me, the biggest change in Arden's career has been hiring Vancouver-based veteran Allen (Bryan Adams, Anne Murray) to manage her. The two were longtime friends previously. They'd have dinner a couple of times a year going back at least a decade.

"He said, 'You need to let me manage you. Rumour on the street ... is that you're unmanageable,' " Arden says. "And maybe I have been.

"I've been managing myself for 20 years (through a management company). You just come to a fork in the road and you take it. There's nothing that made me go, 'I gotta get away from these people.' I just thought I feel stifled and I need to make changes."

At the time, Arden says she wasn't even sure how she felt about making music anymore.

"I just thought, 'Like, am I interested in music?' 'Cause I just don't want to put it out for the sake of doing it. That's no good for anybody. But I think I was disillusioned. And I was tired of making all the decisions."

After Arden called Allen for advice, he rang her up in July 2008 when he was in Calgary, seeking a meeting.

"He says, 'You're just an untapped talent. You haven't reached your potential. And you've been dicking around too much and you've got to be more focused.'

Arden, for her part, agreed.

"I think I've been lazy. I think I've done just as much as I need to make it work."

After Allen spent two-and-a-half years off and on in Nashville co-producing the SHeDaisy record with old friend Bruce Leitl, he wound up working with Arden on Free using Nashville musicians.

"It was a really organic way of getting there," Arden says. "I knew it wasn't even going to be a country record, which it isn't, but all those organic elements -- they work themselves perfectly into anything, whether it's urban or hip hop. I think you're going to hear more and more ... hybrid sounds."

Over the past year, Arden also got to record a duet, Angel in the Wings, on Olivia Newton-John's most recent album, at the suggestion of the song's composer, Amy Sky -- "I could hug Amy for that," Arden says -- and has been corresponding via e-mail with Bette Midler on a couple of songs, after meeting the Divine Miss M backstage at Midler's Las Vegas show.

"She said, 'Send me some songs,' and so it took me a month to get the courage up to send a song. I've sent her a few I've never recorded, so we'll see what happens. She was really lovely and I left there thinking, 'You know, I've admired her my whole life, and listened to her records, and she didn't let me down.' "

Heart condition a lifelong struggle

Jann Arden, you may recall, was rushed to hospital in March 2007 with chest pains.

At the time, it was reported she had been diagnosed with a rare stress-related heart condition. Turns out, she's been dealing with it her whole life.

"This has been going on for me since I was kid," Arden says. "I had all kinds of heart things. I've had arrhythmia problems all my life, since I was a teenager. When I was 20, I got a pacemaker. And I had that for 17 years. And then it just got to the point where the cardiologist said, 'It's not helping you.' Imagine the changes that cardiology made in a 20-year span. My pacemaker was quite big. So they got it out, but I still have about 16 inches of teflon that's in my heart and under my clavicle."

Arden's condition worsened two years ago.

"My left ventricle blew up three or four times the size it should have been ... It wasn't really pumping. So I was hospitalized for about a week. I spent my 45th birthday in there at The Foothills (Hospital). And then after four or five days and all these ultrasounds and angiograms, he said, 'If I hadn't of seen this myself. I wouldn't have believed it.' But he said, 'Your heart is completely normal again. It's just fixed itself. It looks like something called Tako-Tsubo, which is a disease mostly seen in Japanese widows that have lost their husbands suddenly and they're usually fishing people.' "

Arden had another flareup last November and spent a night in hospital after being forced to leave a charity gig.

"Now they're thinking it has spikes in blood pressure and adrenaline, but they really don't know. Long story short, they've put me on a really, really low dose of a beta-blocker, and it has so helped me. I don't have these runaway heart things and my rhythm has been much better."

Arden keeps family close in new home

Jann Arden has finally moved into her new house on a 14-acre plot just west of Calgary, a home she had been building for three years.

Her parents live about 65 feet away in "a granny cottage."

"It's great having them there. My dad had a stroke about three years ago, so he's doing much better now. And my mom's got a pacemaker and they're in their 70s. I want to have them here, next to me now. They're keeping an eye on me and I'm keeping an eye on them."

Arden is already looking beyond her music career, at writing and becoming more philanthropic.

"Life is so short. And I'm more than halfway through mine, I'm sure. God willing and the creek don't rise.

"That's an Alberta (saying)," she added with a chuckle.