kathleen Edwards Kathleen Edwards is exhausted. It's the tail end of a long day of photo shoots in New York and her energy reserves are clearly ebbing. The Canadian songstress is eager to return home to Toronto where she currently lives with her boyfriend. Just a week away is a trip to Ireland, where she'll open for fellow troubadour Josh Ritter on a string of dates. So, there will be guitars to pack, last-minute details to attend. And we're also well into the holiday season; certainly there are better things for a beautiful young 26-year-old to do in mid-December than play Meet the Press. Memo to interviewers: If you want to get Kathleen Edwards' attention, utter the following words: Sophomore slump. It does the trick today. Edwards is now on full alert, suddenly as confident as a wartime general about to go into battle and secure in the knowledge of possessing the superior firepower. Doubtless she's heard the term plenty of times already, in discussing the much-awaited followup to Failer, her critically-hosanna'd, multiple awards-nominated 2003 debut. Edwards ain't having none of that-the "slump" stuff. To hear her tell it, when making Back to Me (due March 1 on Zoe/Rounder) she met the enemy early on-and the enemy was hers. 'The tough part was going on and getting started," Edwards says. 'thinking I had to live up to something, especially to the people who were so kind to review Failer in a favorable way. But once I got in the studio working on it, I felt really good about what I was doing and was able to put all self-doubt behind me. "I mean if you don't make yourself happy with what you want to do, you're only going to be miserable-even if people love it! And you know what? It ended up being the record that I'd hoped I'd be able to make." Edwards has been marshaling her own troops-literally and figuratively-for most of her life. Born in Ottawa in 1979, she mastered the art of self-reliance early on. Her parents were diplomats in the Canadian Foreign Service, and as a result Edwards and her older brother frequently found themselves uprooted to such disparate locales as Korea and Switzerland. That, Edwards says now, forced her to grow up "a lot quicker than normal. I guess it did make me confident, only because you had to be walking into a new school every few years and you had to sort of carry your own. Sink or swim. I definitely chose to swim. And it was one of those things where you don't have any close friends, so you gotta be pretty content with yourself. I'd do my own thing, just sit in my bedroom, play guitar or listen to records, and that was my companion more so than a gaggle of girls." Growing up in a music-friendly household didn't hurt either. Both of Edwards' parents sung in church choirs, and Mrs. Edwards was also a piano teacher. Extraordinarily willful even at the age of five, however, young Kathleen instinctively balked at piano lessons and insisted she be allowed to take up violin instead. After six months her mother grew weary of butting heads and put her tutorials away. "She realized I was too difficult and that I wasn't going to listen to her because she was my mother," Edwards says, adding somewhat ruefully, "which I've always regretted, because I wish I was a better piano player." Just the same, Edwards did apply herself to her classical violin studies well into her teens, developing a keen ear for melodies in the process. (The training would bear additional fruit years later: On her albums Edwards arranges and plays her own string parts.) Edwards' brother was another source of musical education. Many of the albums he encouraged her to check out were classic singer-songwriter fare-Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, etc.-although the record she fell hardest for, a Christmas gift when she was 14, fell decisively on the rock 'n' roll end of the spectrum: Tom Petty's Into the Great Wide Open, which she recalls playing to death and knowing "every song inside and out." Upon discovering Ani DiFranco a few years later, Edwards became hooked on the notion of mastering the guitar and writing her own songs. "I [became] a really good acoustic guitar player. I could mimic everything that Ani did-that percussive style, playing things in weird tunings. A lot of songs on Failer, actually, were written in weird tunings. She's an extremely powerful performer and an extremely poignant songwriter, and she totally spoke to me at that particular time in my life. I remember the first couple of songs I wrote. They were so obviously influenced by Ani, just [growling, making noises] these angsty, teenage girl songs." By the time Edwards graduated from high school she'd already chosen-much to her parents' disappointment-music over college. Soon enough she was making the rounds of the Ottawa club and coffeehouse scene, and years of violin recitals immediately paid off; never shy about performing in front of people, Edwards rarely failed to grab and keep an audience's attention. "More because of the energy of my delivery rather than the content, I'm afraid!" she says, laughing at the memory. After recording and pressing 500 copies of a six-song EP, 1999's Building 55, Edwards took the bold step of self-booking a tour through Canada. The fall of 2000 was spent driving from gig to gig in her old Chevy Suburban, sometimes barely earning enough gas money to get to the next town. Returning home to Ottawa and now more self-reliant than ever, Edwards broke up with her boyfriend and moved to rural Quebec. It was there, in 2001, lodged in a remote house in the countryside, where she wrote most of the songs that would wind up on her debut album. Faile, recorded in studios in Ottawa and Toronto with a cast of seasoned Ottawa musicians, was initially released in Canada in 2002. After early critical buzz reached the ears of Zoe/Rounder, the American label licensed the record for a January 2003 rollout in the United States. Edwards duly assembled a touring band-bassist Kevin McCarragher and drummer Joel Anderson, both from the album sessions, plus guitarist/vocalist Colin Cripps-and for the rest of the year the highway became her home. To say that Failer caught the imagination of the press would be a huge understatement; music critics practically beat a path to Edwards' door bearing gifts of frankincense and myrrh. All the heavy hitters, from Rolling Stone to Time to USA Today, weighed in with the kudos, typically dropping names like Lucinda Williams, Sheryl Crow, Neil Young and Ryan Adams as peer company Edwards was destined to keep. Edwards also became the toast of NPR (especially World Cafe) and late-night TV talk shows, no doubt guaranteeing her CD prominent placement in every Barnes & Noble and Starbucks in North America. By the time 2003 came to a close Failer was cropping up on just about every year-end best-of list (including Harp's, which named it "Best Debut Album" and Edwards "Best Debut Artist" of '03). Failer went on to garner a slew of award nominations for 2003: "Best New Artist," JUNO Awards; "Roots Artist of the Year," Canadian Country Music Awards; "Album of the Year" and "Artist of the Year," Americana Music Association Awards; and the annual Shortlist Music Prize. It's not hard to understand why. Edwards' blend of believable storytelling and sonic intimacy made for some compelling star turns on the album, particularly on songs such as the caustic, anti-music biz jangler "One More Song the Radio Won't Like" (it was accompanied by a memorably quirky video) and the airy, little-boy-lost acoustic ode "Lone Wolf." Also, the singer's vocal delivery, part Lucinda Williams erotic-tinged drawl, part Aimee Mann intrigue-laced purr, couldn't help but warm the fantasies of many a critic and commentator-male and female alike. Edwards admits that all the "It Girl" hype threatened to disrupt her well-honed sense of equilibrium but says she was fortunate enough to have a band of level-headed, professional players, most of them in their 40s, to lean on whenever the spotlight glare got too bright. Keeping things in perspective, she also adopted a kind of carpe diem attitude: "I'd think, 'I may never be in this position again. I may never be on Letterman again; this might be a one-time thing.' It certainly seemed like that going in. So you just go, 'If I wake up tomorrow and the music's over, I want to know that I gave my all. So I'm gonna go in there and fucking kill.' Otherwise there's no point in being here." Edwards does recall one particular star-struck moment when a concert in Wyoming opening for Bob Dylan brought her into the presence of an unlikely new fan: "We had just played and we were backstage, and Roger Daltrey walks into the backstage tent! He was duded up in jeans, cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, and I'm like, 'Jesus! What the fuck is he doing here?' It was weird, but it was really cool. And the guys in my band were ecstatic." Zoe/Rounder issued a stopgap EP in late 2003, Live From the Bowery Ballroom. It featured three songs recorded in New York, one of which was a surprising cover of AC/DC's "Money Talks," plus the videos for "One More Song the Radio Won't Like" and "Six O'Clock News." 2004 brought more touring for Edwards-and an extended trip to the studio to make Back to Me with her touring band. Guitarist Colin Cripps jointly produced it with Edwards (who calls him "my second set of ears") and additionally receives two co-writing credits, while notable among the album's guests is Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' Benmont Tench on piano and organ. (For the Back to Me tour keyboards are scheduled to be handled by Jim Bryson, an old friend of and mentor to Edwards who also contributed guitar to Failer; Edwards covers his song "Somewhere Else" on the new album.) Told the obvious, that the high expectations raised by a stellar debut inevitably breeds anxiety among fans, journalists, managers and record companies alike (it ain't for nothing that the term "sophomore slump" is frequently applied in the music biz), Edwards says she understands the feeling. "I know exactly what you mean, about listening to a record by someone you like and hoping that their next record will go the direction that makes the most sense, and without it getting worse or being too much of a good thing. I'd like to think that on Back to Me the songwriting is improved, because to me it's about the songs. That was my main priority. Certainly there's no departure on Back to Me from anything-it's just a tighter record in terms of production values and sounds." That it is, and it's even tempting to call the album a portrait of the young artist discovering her inner rock 'n' roller. Compared to Failer, in both the sequencing of tracks and the overall tone, Back to Me feels hearty and upbeat-swaggering, even, especially in the way Edwards delivers her vocals with newfound vigor. The opening cut, "In State," about a guy who's felonious both in life and in love and on the verge of a comeuppance, is classic Americana jangle-twang, part Byrds, part Buddy Miller, part Springsteen, while first single "Back to Me" is an unabashed Tom Petty-styled raveup in which Edwards' increasingly desperate protagonist tries to reel back in a straying lover (picture Chrissie Hynde recasting the Pretenders' "Brass in Pocket" as a stalker tune). The presence of keyboardist Tench-speaking of Tom Petty-on several songs further enhances the record's robust qualities. Yet if you listen closely, the lines connecting Back to Me and Failer can be discerned. A couple of tunes are atmospheric and country-folkish in feel ("Pink Emerson Radio," "Good Things"), and "Away" is mostly acoustic with just a hint of distant, hushed electric guitars. More important, perhaps, is that where Failer was written under circumstances of literal isolation, Back to Me has the unmistakable feel of psychic isolation, with themes of alienation, personal displacement and the damning power of memory cropping up throughout the album. Both "Away" and "Copied Keys" pointedly address those themes. In the former, the singer returns to revisit old haunts and look up old friends only to discover, "I don't know who to call/ I don't know who to write/ And I think I forgot/ What your face looks like/ I've been away." And in the latter, against a burnished backdrop of strings and gently jangling guitars, Edwards perfectly voices the unsettling emotional paradox we're sometimes forced to weather when sacrificing in order to be with the person we love: 'this is not my town and it will never be/ This is our apartment filled with your things/ This is your life/ I get copied keys." "More times than not this album is about place and not a particular person," explains Edwards. "My life's sort of been turned upside down the last couple of years, me putting out a record and then spending a lot of time on the road. I ended up moving to Toronto during this time-for personal reasons, not professional-so I miss my hometown a lot, miss my friends a lot. The part that was the hardest was knowing I wasn't actually going to go back to my home [in Ottawa], but to a city that I don't really call home." She adds that as a songwriter she's consistently drawn to darker themes, citing in particular Gillian Welch's work as inspirational. "I really don't find it easy to write when I'm in a good mood. I mean, what can you fucking say? 'Yippee yee ya hah!' What do you write about when you're in a good mood? I just find so much beauty in stuff that's dark. What's great about that is the idea that there's a lot of hope out there. And [because of that] I think a lot of these songs are really love songs, even the ones not about people." It's time for the interview to wind down and Edwards is due elsewhere shortly, yet in assessing the events of the past few years she seems to have caught a second wind and is willing to keep talking. "At one point I played this show in Canada. Toronto had a big SARS fundraiser [on July 30, 2003] and it was the largest Canadian concert in history, with the Stones and AC/DC. And I'm a huge AC/DC fan-who isn't?-and I got to meet those guys. They're all tiny! [laughs] I got to watch AC/DC play in front of 500,000 people and I had the best seat in the house! It was incredible. Just one of those experiences where, for all the shitty gigs that might happen for months afterwards, you don't get fazed by them because you remember how incredible that one was. I just feel like I'm the luckiest girl in the world, you know? I kinda got plucked out of my community of friends and musicians-and my life! And I've had an opportunity that a lot of people would love to have. I'm certainly not a household name, and I'm certainly not selling enough records yet to support myself, but I feel like things couldn't have gone any better." Edwards pauses for a moment, weighing what she's just said, then pulls up a memory. "My mom was the only person who ever said to me, 'Playing music for a living is one of the hardest things you could choose to do.' And she was certainly right. My violin teacher, who was a world class violinist, he played in an orchestra full time and still had to have students on the side to make ends meet-there's not a lot of justice in the music industry in terms of who makes money and who doesn't. But I just always knew, with music, this is what I wanted to do. I served tables for years and years and I spent a lot of my money recording in a studio. Trying to make demos. Trying to play shows. Taking charge of my band and trying to pay them all. Before I had a manager and an agent, I was on my own and I had to learn the ropes as someone who was serious about being part of this." Giggling, she adds, "I've had a deal with my dad since I was about 10 years old, which was, 'Dad, when I make it, I'm gonna buy you whatever sports car you want!' Because, you know, I have never taken any of this lightly." Making Tracks: Kathleen Edwards explains some of Back to Me's lyrical inspirations. "In State" I know the content of that song is very similar to "Six O'Clock News" [from Failer] but it's totally unplanned. It's got a great melody and I love the solo in it. And I liked the term "in state" - all I could think of was that instead of him being "in the state pen" he's just "in state." I wrote the chorus to that song long before I wrote the verses: "I know where the cops hang out and I know where you'll be found..." Everything that followed came from that. I just tried to build a bit of a story. "Back To Me" I wrote that before I went out on my first major tour. I realized after awhile that it was totally my "Running Down a Dream" song, that Tom Petty vibe. This woman submitted an idea [for the video] where I'm gonna be on a 1940s-type tugboat, like someone has left me and they left me on this boat. I'll be like some nutty fisherwoman with a pet pig or something. "Summerlong" That was the hardest one because we'd been playing it so long it was hard to make it fresh in the studio. It has the only bridge I've ever consciously written. Colin [Cripps, her guitarist] got a co-write on that song because he said, "Look, you need to stir things up. You need a little bridge here." I said, "No, I don't need a fucking bridge. Bridges are for Nashville writers!" "Away" and "Copied Keys" The songs I'm most attached to. They came from me struggling with accepting I'm not going to be living in Ottawa anymore. I'm from there and I really miss it, but for the benefit of a relationship, you make those sacrifices and you have to live with them. You're happy in one way, but you're also sad for what you leave behind. "Good Things" It's about my family and my brother. [Paraphrasing a lyric]: 'He fell in love and now he lives in the city.' That's my brother. We're extremely different people but we're very close, and I just remember him and I both being in situations where we passionately knew what we wanted to do but the phone wasn't ringing. Apparently that song made him cry the first time he heard it-which is very validating to me because I never could seem to make my brother cry when we were kids fighting! Fred Mills harpmagazine.com				Album reviews Feature articles Interviews Show reviews