Kathleen Edwards

Features > On the Cover > May 2008

By Chris WhibbsMusic plays different roles in everyone’s lives. For the solitary singer-songwriter, it has to imbue every part of you, otherwise there’s a danger of that well of creativity running dry. For Kathleen Edwards, that doesn’t seem to be a problem. "I don’t remember the moment it happened,” she tries to recall. "Music was always there for me. I used to listen to music and sit on the bus to school and feel so moved by what I was listening to all the time that I thought maybe I was much more affected by music than other people, because I couldn’t understand how people weren’t as affected as I was. Just from listening to all sorts of stuff like Ani DiFranco, Cowboy Junkies, Tom Petty. And that’s the music before you get bitten by the real music bug, in a sense, where you start discovering music on your own and not music that friends are telling you about.”

From the release of her debut album, Failer, in 2002 to her current triumph, Asking For Flowers, Kathleen Edwards has been working at her own music and, along the way, discovering a strong, certain voice. Yet for her, the journey never seems to be over; each new album brings new challenges and opportunities to flex those creative, stubborn muscles.Asking for Flowers is a perfect example. Not only has she taken on broad, difficult subjects, like rising gun violence on "Oh Canada” and "Alicia Ross” — her personal take on the story of a young Markham, Ontario woman slain by her neighbour — but she decided to leave the comfort of home and hightail it to California to record with Jim Scott, who produced Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, an album that Edwards, as a teenager, adored. It wasn’t just Jim Scott waiting for her, but a whole bunch of musicians she’d never met, which was Edwards’ plan all along — she specifically requested that Scott pick musicians that would play well with her. "It was definitely weird going down and playing these songs,” Edwards admits. "Some of the first songs I recorded were the really emotionally heavy ones, and it’s definitely a little frightening doing that with people you’ve never met.” In the end, the experiment emboldened her. "It was such a rewarding experience because it makes you feel like every intuition that you have about going for something kind of falls into place. That’s why making records is so great. It’s things that are familiar versus things that aren’t and both of them are like the ‘x’ factor; you just don’t know what they’re going be.”

The unfamiliar territory seems starker when you consider that for her last album, Back to Me, she worked with her husband, former Junkhouse and Crash Vegas guitarist (and now full-time Edwards guitarist) Colin Cripps as her producer. For Flowers, Cripps just followed her to California and played on the album. For him, the reason is quite clear: "Just to do something different. I think she didn’t want to work with me because of that. [Scott] mixed the last record and it was a really good relationship and he’s obviously done some great records and that was definitely was something she wanted to pursue.” Edwards admits it was a tough move, but quite necessary. "It was just a chance for me to do something independently of him,” she explains, "which isn’t always easy because, you know, we do so much together. He did still play on the record, but I think it was a little while before it wasn’t such a sensitive issue anymore. Having him around is amazing, so it definitely wasn’t an easy thing to do.”The circumstances surrounding Flowers would have shocked the Edwards who crafted Failer. That debut made such a strong impression because it was so emotionally straightforward and open and, well, blunt. Indeed, at the start of her career Edwards followed the old adage of "write what you know,” no doubt inspired by her youth in Ottawa. She was the one around the campfire at summer camp as well as the one who played with her friends at the capital’s Merivale High School. "I would take my guitar to school all the time and it was never with the intention of playing for people. I just liked playing guitar so much that I would go down to the basement and hang out there and sing songs. I wasn’t doing it for people.”

By 1998, that started to change with regular gigs around Ottawa, backed up by guitarist Jim Bryson, who’s supported acts like the Weakerthans and Sarah Harmer as well as releasing his own gorgeous folk rock albums, like the recent Where the Bungalows Roam. Their musical relationship started where most artistic things bloom in Ottawa, over a pint at the Manx Pub on Elgin Street. The alchemy was immediate and it continues to this day — Bryson has played on every Edwards album, including Flowers. As to why they work so well together, Bryson says, "I’ve always said she’s my favourite person in the world to sing with. I’ve done lots of singing with other people but there’s just a natural intuitiveness that I feel playing music with her. There’s just been something about our personalities that we’ve always kind of got along like relatives, where we can bitch and complain at each other.” Edwards concurs: "I heard someone recently describe the notion that you have soul-mates and stuff like that and Jim is definitely one of my soul-mates. It’s not weird, like your soul-mate is the person you marry and all that shit, but your soul-mate is somebody who challenges you and that you have this creative outlet with and we really connect that way. He’s a great friend; he’s like a brother to me.”

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