Once More, With Feeling Kathleen Edwards Has a Knack for Channeling Anger Into Her Music If you see Kathleen Edwards perform at the Birchmere on Sunday night, try to upset her. Don't do it sincerely or out of mean-heartedness. Rather, do it for the tunes, because if you really get to her, maybe she'll write another great rocker like 'The Cheapest Key," a tough, angry, yet clever and sweetly melodic song based on a real-life relationship. "A is for all the times I bit my tongue/B is for bull [expletive] and you fed me some," she sings on her newest album, "Asking for Flowers." And then, "You always play me in the cheapest key." Edwards, 30, is not confrontational. In fact, she doubts that the object of her disaffection in 'The Cheapest Key" has any idea of her disdain. She's more laissez-faire, she says. But it is through her music, Edwards says, that she can channel the things that make her angry. It's her "sort-of therapy," she adds. As with the best artists, you can't pigeonhole Edwards or her music. "I love hydrangeas, and I love having lots of herbs in the garden," she says about her home in Ontario, Canada, in one breath. Then, in another, "Okay, I [expletive] hate someone right now," she says, recalling her reaction to having to hop a bus from Ottawa to New York City in a snowstorm to play the "Late Show With David Letterman." Although she can really channel that anger into her songs, most of the tunes on her new album are mellow, slow and introspective. The ethereal, dreamlike first track includes a long instrumental intro and these lyrics: "You know what I wish?/It was just you and me sitting in this corner bar/You could tell me how you are/But I'm not gonna lie or anything/You don't even have to speak if you keep lookin' at me. " Her songs, she says, are cryptic narratives, along the lines of singer-songwriter Richard Buckner. "I never know what the [expletive] he's talking about," she says. "You get to form this painting in your mind through the music about what this song is and how you fit into it." Edwards started playing violin when she was 5 or 6 years old, taking lessons and performing in festivals. Her father was a Canadian ambassador when she was growing up, so she lived abroad quite a bit. At 14, she picked up the guitar and after high school started playing open mikes in Ottawa, not really thinking much about what she was doing. She released her first full-length album, "Failer," in Canada in 2003. It sounds dirtier and is more melodically driven rock-and-roll than her latest album. She received very little attention for it at first. But it didn't take long for her luck to change, and she soon landed a spot on Letterman's show. That, she says, propelled her career forward. She released "Back to Me" in 2005, which was nominated for a Juno Award (the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy). The album includes another good, raw, angry rocker, "Back to Me." Since her break on Letterman (she has appeared on his show several times since), Edwards has opened for Willie Nelson, toured with the Indigo Girls, landed a song in a movie ("Elizabethtown") and been nominated for four Junos, including songwriter of the year in 2006. Her favorite song from the new album is the title track, a simple downer about (again) a relationship gone wrong. "I was really able to write a song I feel is true," she says. "It's one of those songs I am proud to have written. I did justice to an experience a lot of people have." It's probably no reflection on her own marriage of almost five years to her guitarist Colin Cripps. It's good, she says, to be married to and tour with a fellow musician who understands the grind of the road. And yet "it's really hard to be with your spouse every [expletive] second of every day. I've always enjoyed my time alone," Edwards says. She likes eating dinner alone, long walks alone, gardening alone, watching Canadians fishtail (on purpose) in the snow outside her house alone. She figures, though, that it won't take her long post-tour to get stir-crazy: "I will go bananas." That's good news for fans looking for more of Edwards's emotional rockers. Moira E. McLaughlin Washington Post				Album reviews Feature articles Interviews Show reviews