Looking for the right fit How do you tell a musician like Kathleen Edwards she's made a great album but the chances of commercial radio airplay are pretty grim? The conundrum baffles the Ottawa singer-songwriter to such a degree that discussions on the topic resulted in her tuneful, scathing, ditty entitled One More Song The Radio Won't Like. "It stemmed from a conversation (with my manager Patrick Sambrook) about not necessarily having anything on my record that would fit into radio format," Edwards says from her Wakefield-area home, referring to her new full-length effort Failer. "Someone would say things like, 'Well, we really love your album but there's nothing here that's gonna make it on the radio.' So in other words, what you're saying is you like my record but you question whether it's going to sell enough units to make an impression. "Why not try selling the record based on the fact it's a great record? To what extent do we change something that's already good to make it better or worse just to fit on the radio? Why not radio fit us?" Edwards wouldn't feel so self-assured on the issue if she didn't have a solid CD to back it up. The follow-up to her 1999 debut EP Building 55, Failer finds the 23-year-old delivering a cohesive, alt-country-cum-rock collection of experiences -- some storied, but many personal in nature. 'They're all from a time in my life when things were really up and down," says Edwards, who headlines a Black Sheep Inn gig Friday night before flying to Texas for the South By Southwest music festival. She'll also showcase a Barrymore's gig in April. "Some songs, like Lone Wolf for example, I wrote with the idea of a person. It's my way of being able to carry that individual with me wherever I go. But the rest of the record is very personal: 12 Bellevue and National Steel definitely were therapy songs for me." Rather than hide behind poetic cliches about broken-heartedness, Edwards barks back with frank and brutal honesty. When she's not talking about failed relationships or bruised emotions, Edwards will use a song like Hockey Skates to speak her mind to a group of close male musical pals who get together for a shinny game or two: "Do you think your boys' club will crumble just because of a loud-mouthed girl?" 'There are pieces of that song from people I knew in that circle who'd say, 'I always wanted to come out and play hockey, I've never done it before,' and find out it's a guy thing only -- it pissed me right off," Edwards says with a laugh. "Yet I've been welcomed with open arms since. But you'd think I'd have the balls to go and actually show up? (Laughs.) Actually, I practise at home on my pond behind the house." Edwards has always maintained her independence, likely from years of living in various cities wherever her diplomat dad Len Edwards was stationed. Young Kathleen studied classical violin for 12 years while living in Korea and Switzerland before settling back in Canada as a teen in 1997. She eschewed university in favour of honing her guitar playing and songwriting, which got a huge local booster in budding singer-songwriter Jim Bryson, who plays on several Failer cuts. Heartache isn't the only theme running through Failer it seems. When Edwards opened for Hayden's Ottawa show last week, she explains, "I had a friend in the audience who kept overhearing people saying, 'Is she an alcoholic? 'Cause a lot of her songs are about bars and booze?' "I just can't escape it," she adds with a chuckle. "I mean, yeah, sometimes I get a little carried away, but it's a huge part of that record. I can't control the way the people perceive who I am, so I just have to accept it." Ian Nathanson Ottawa Sun				Album reviews Feature articles Interviews Show reviews