Music preview:  Rootsy Kathleen Edwards is a success with 'Failer' Not that she's comparing herself to Joni Mitchell or Neil Young - it's way too early for that - but Kathleen Edwards recognized from their careers that even making it in her native Canada might involve breaking first in the States. "We have to go to the U.S., go south," Edwards says, 'to have people perk up their ears before Canadians kind of stand up and start taking notice. It's a little bit of a Canadian curse." So far, her experience here in the "south" has been anything but a "failer." Edwards has been drawing rave reviews from all the right places, is playing the late-night talk shows and got the nod from Rolling Stone as part of 'The Next Wave" to watch in 2003. It's a lot more than the 24-year-old Edwards expected when she set off to create "Failer." "Some days I just can't believe what's going on," she says. "I started recording 'Failer' in Canada less than two years ago as an attempt to get an arts grant to record an album. So it was just going to be a demo with a few songs. It just kind of went from there. I never got the funding, but I recorded the album anyway. I'm surprised and flattered that things have gone the way they have gone." As for the back story, Edwards was born in Ottawa, but with parents in the foreign service, part of her youth was spent in Korea and Switzerland. Her first musical experience was studying the violin as a kid (a skill she uses on "Failer"). "It made me grow up a little quicker," she says of her travels. 'There were things I got to experience that a lot of kids didn't get a chance to. I was protected from things. Growing up a teenager in North America is a lot different than growing up in an international community." Her musical tastes owed a lot to her brother's record collection, which was heavy on Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty records. By the time she was in high school, Edwards was playing acoustic cover songs in the clubs. At some point, she discovered Whiskeytown and the band's gorgeous "Strangers' Almanac." 'that record," she says, "kind of broke the ice for me in terms of bringing country elements into songs and not necessarily making them country songs but having the instrumentation be present." To get herself on the road, Edwards released the six-song EP, "Building 55," in late '99. It helped her to realize firsthand just what a big place Canada is, and how hard it is to tour a country where the major cities are so far apart - especially in a 1988 Chevy Suburban. In the summer of 2001, after a breakup with her boyfriend, she retreated to a small town north of Ottawa that's "full of hippies and granolas, musicians, artists, some farmers" to begin writing "Failer." "I did go through a breakup," she says, "but it wasn't always the prevalent theme for my songs. To the average person listening to these songs, they might think that. It's as much about me falling on my face and trying to find out who I am as it is getting over a broken heart." Songs like "12 Bellevue" and "Lone Wolf" have an autobiographical ring, but Edwards manages to write vividly inside and outside of her own experiences. The alcohol-drenched record opens with "Six O'Clock News," a Petty-esque rocker about a pregnant woman watching the cops surrounding a farmhouse where her lover is wielding a gun. "One More Song the Radio Won't Like" depicts a cocky young rock star trying to pick up a girl at a bar. Edwards also doesn't shy away from a provocative line. In "12 Bellevue," she sings, "I don't want to be your friend/Just take off your clothes and get into my bed." "Westby" deals with the tail end of an extramarital affair with an older man, Edwards singing, "I don't think your wife would like my friends." Edwards' languid and sexy delivery, coupled with the mix of soft acoustic and jabbing electric and steel guitars, is undeniably reminiscent of Lucinda Williams, whom just about every female roots artist is compared to these days. 'There's a reason [for the comparison]," Edwards says, "because she's one of the most respected artists in North America in the roots genre and so the comparison's a compliment. But it's not necessarily accurate. I listened to a lot of Beth Orton and a lot of Aimee Mann more than Lucinda Williams. I got 'Car Wheels on a Gravel Road' like two years after it came out and it's a good record, but I had already started writing my record. Having said that, I know we're very similar in vocal styling and the kind of genre we play." Comparisons aside, Edwards is comfortable that "Failer" came out exactly as she wanted it and that, on the small Zoe/Rounder label, she's fully in charge of her career. "I've always felt like things are in my control," she says. "I can't imagine it being any other way. It's funny how many people will still think you have to give certain things up to be able to do this. I know from personal experience that I didn't have to do that. ['One More Song the Radio Won't Like'] is a huge reminder to me that I was able to break or be able to have some opportunities come my way in this business and I didn't have to change a single thing about what I do." Scott Mervis Pittsburgh Post-Gazette				Album reviews Feature articles Interviews Show reviews