Americana UK Interviews Kathleen Edwards hi kathleen! how long are you in the uk and what are you doing while you're here? i'm here doing promotion actually. i arrived on the 1st, and i'm leaving tomorrow morning, quite early in the morning to go to amsterdam for a few days, then i'm going back to canada, i have some tour dates from the 7th. i've never seen so many different names mentioned in comparisons for someone with a new album, names like lucinda williams, nanci griffiths, the gin blossoms, stevie nicks and janis joplin among others. of them, are there any that you particularly like as a comparison? i think i'm one of those people who tend to consider the comparisons not really for my purpose, but for other peoples purpose really, to get a sense or general ideas of different sounds and if calling something alt. country, some people hate it, some people don't mind at all. i consider it to be something that is just maybe a word that's put in to help other people who don't know what the music sounds like to perhaps get a better idea. i think my favourite comparison was the comparison to neil young's crazy horse. it's funny because i never sort of thought of it until i read it in an article then as soon as i read it i thought that to me makes the most sense out of basically what my influences are, and how it actually sounds. like a lot of people say yeah lucinda williams, but i don't think i sound as much lucinda williams, i think crazy horse is a much better comparison than lucinda williams. but that's just me! no i can see that, i mean most of the songs on the album feature a band setting as well. do you write them with a band in mind and let the band develop the fills for themselves as crazy horse might or do you present them with a complete version of a song? usually a bit of both. i usually know how i want the song to sound in the end, but i don't necessarily know how to get about it, so i would always just let the band sort of take it on their own in terms of letting them see what they come up with, and going from there, and sometimes it would be a long session of working on parts and sometimes it wouldn't be, and it would be instant you know just connect right away. do you have particular songs which you're happier playing in a solo environment rather than with the band? well no, I always love playing with a band. it's one of those things where i've played solo enough, that i feel that playing with the band allows me to do more when i'm playing live and that's more interesting to me, but it's also amazing to go out on a stage and play solo in front of a hundred or two hundred people, and have the room just totally silent. that's pretty great. these gigs that you're doing at the weekend in ontario, what sort of venues are they? yeah they're quite big venues 5,000 to7,000 people. i'm opening for a band called blue rodeo, a very popular canadian roots, canadiana i guess you'd say rather than americana (laughs)...they're great. they've been around for quite some time; they have quite an amazing discography. really amazing songwriters. two guys, one's called jim cuddy and the others called greg keelor. and they're almost like opposites in personality; in the way that they write songs and they sort of have formed this amazing kind of sound as the two opposites come together. it's really quite cool. we'll check them out. some of your lyrics seem a little bit angry, and yet when i checked out your website, there's messages from hometown people and teachers who are delighted with your success, which gives a far more wholesome type of image. which is the real kathleen? well i had to go to school so i don't really have a choice about whether teachers know who i am. i know what you mean though, i guess i think that it's really nice that people are kind of popping an ad in to say "hey we've been hearing about you and way to go!" (but) they (the lyrics) are quite true to who i am i think. gibson guitars seem to figure quite a bit in the band. that's your guitar of choice? it's definitely my guitar of choice; it's good that you picked up on that. i'm actually touring right now, my gibson has to go to the shop because i'm touring basically for the rest of february, and it needed some work so i had to come over here with a borrowed martin, which some people consider better, but i miss my gibson. i love the acoustic sound on sweet little duck. is that the gibson? yeah i recorded the whole record with my gibson, and i've had a few acoustic gibsons sort of come and go in the last six months, sort of trading in one for another, but i've kept the same gibson that i've had in all my promo photos and that i play live. the name kathleen edwards is a bit of a mixture of irish and welsh, do you have a background from the uk? yeah my dad comes from a british family the edwards, and my mum, although my father's mother's side was all irish, she was a ferguson, and so i have a bit of the irish lineage as well. mum was a scot so but they're also second generation canadian so everyone in canada declares themselves to be irish or scottish wr Welsh. we're diluted versions of that. have you got anything planned for maybe a tour, or some gigs here? yeah it's supposed to be happening in late april and early may. i know that i'm playing the blue highway festival in holland, and then basically everything after that will be tour dates. i believe i might be playing the borderline. you'll have to make sure you come up to liverpool as well. yeah i'd love that. when you're travelling, what sort of music are you listening to? do you listen to much? yeah i really like listening to music by myself. i find sometimes when other people are around i'm always conscious that i don't tend to enjoy it as much because i always worry that it's not something that they're in to, and i'm really into it and if somebody else isn't in to it, it takes some of the pleasure of listening to music away. so i tend to really enjoy listening to music on my own. but right now i'm listening to a bunch of different stuff. i just bought beck's new record "sea change", and i wasn't really a beck fan, and then i heard his record and i just absolutely loved it, i think it's just gorgeous. it's really, really sad, and i like that quite a bit. i got the rolling stones "let it bleed" re-mastered, cause i don't have any rolling stones. steve earle's "jerusalem" is one amazing record. i reviewed that for the site. he's a great artist i think. yeah i think it's definitely one of the most underrated cd's. i mean everyone praises it, but it really doesn't get any sort of attention above and beyond kind of cool americana, and regional sort of reviews. what else have i been listening to? there's a uk singer songwriter who i'm a really, really big fan of, and that's peter bruntnell. i loved "normal for bridgewater", that was probably one of my favourite albums of the last years. i listened to that, i still listen to it all the time. he's someone i'm really looking forward to meeting. i'm a big fan of his. and there's a canadian guy who played on my record actually who comes and tours in the uk you should check out his names jim bryson. him and my friend oh susanna, i'm big fans of theirs. in autumn 2000 you were booking your own gigs and driving across canada, and now you've had a gig on david letterman, that's some change isn't it? how does that feel? i'm surprisingly kind of unphased by it. i don't know how else to describe it... i kind of just... it's really exciting, but i don't suddenly feel like "ohmigod i'm a star now... ohmigod i broke!" you should do, there's a real buzz about the album! it's great i think. i think i feel like sometimes because i'm doing a lot of work, or i'm working hard and doing a lot of interviews and starting to tour, i sort of feel like all of it has been relatively progressive and obviously the david letterman thing was the big deal for all of us from our little home town, but at the same time it's just as important doing an interview with you. i consider everything to be as important as the other. thank you very much for talking to us. well thank you for the interview, hopefully we'll see you in liverpool. barry jones americana-uk.com				Album reviews Feature articles Interviews Show reviews