Kathleen Edwards is on the verge. With her debut album, Failer, already released in Canada and due out in America come January, the 24-year-old singer/songwriter is being hailed as a stunning combination of Lucinda Williams, Crazy Horse and Neil Young. Bruce Warren, the program director at WXPN, calls Failer "one of the first great records our listeners will embrace in 2003. It's fantastic. Even in her quietest moments, Edwards' voice just soars, and she's a unique, natural, storyteller."
Currently on tour with fellow Canadian rocker Danny Michel, Edwards enjoyed a short break this past weekend at her parents' home in Ottawa, where she was born. But with parents in the Foreign Service, Edwards spent most of her formative years living in Korea and Switzerland. "If anything, [growing up overseas] prevented me from listening to Canadian and North American pop radio, but also I played classical violin and that was a big part of my life growing up."
Edwards started studying the violin at age four and took up the guitar during her junior year of high school. "I enjoyed guitar," she says. "It was one of those things that I started to do just for fun, and then I was spending the majority of my time doing it. I realized this was something I really wanted to do."
Edwards passed up attending college in favor of writing songs and playing gigs at Ottawa clubs. In 1999, she recorded a six-song EP called Building 55 and distributed 500 copies herself. The following fall, Edwards was booking her own tour dates across Canada. Of touring, she says, "I love it. It is like living out of a suitcase, like being a traveling salesman; you have this routine day-to-day."
In 2002, Edwards was signed to Zo‰ Records, the indie-rock division of Rounder Records. Earlier this year, she played the prestigious South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Tex. "You don't get paid to do SXSW, so you get there the cheapest way possible and then you get out the hell out of there as quickly as possible," she recalls. "We drove from Toronto to Austin in a day and a half. You never know who you're going to run into there. It's like this great big melting pot of music people. I was kinda awestruck and it was a great time."
Having already established herself as a live performer, Edwards is now preparing for an American debut. In the coming weeks, she will tape a guest spot on WXPN's World Cafe and is set to appear at the Mercury Lounge in New York.Next week, Edwards will shoot her first music video. "I'm actually pretty nervous," she admits regarding the video. "I don't want to look like an ass. I am allowing someone else to make me look however they decide and this makes me really nervous. I'm a bit of a control freak."
In terms of long-term career plans, Edwards is enthusiastic but remains grounded. "The way to rate your own personal success is to remember that it is not a popularity race," she says calmly. "I want to go and play as many places as possible and walk through as many doors as are open for me, and just see what is comfortable for me as an artist. I just want to access as many opportunities as possible, to try them out and to go on from there"
