Kathleen Edwards

Kathleen Edwards
Kathleen Edwards at Wakefield, Quebec's Black Sheep Inn, September 1, 2011
Background information
Born	(1978-07-11) July 11, 1978 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Genres	Alternative country, folk
Occupation(s)	Musician, songwriter
Instruments	Guitar, violin, vocals, bass guitar
Years active	1999–present
Labels	Zoë, MapleMusic Recordings
Website	kathleenedwards.com

Kathleen Edwards (born July 11, 1978^[1]) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and musician. Her 2003 debut album, Failer, contained the singles "Six O'Clock News" and "Hockey Skates".^[2] Her next two albums – Back to Me and Asking for Flowers – both made the Billboard 200 list and reached the top 10 of Billboard's Top Heatseekers chart. In 2012, Edwards' fourth studio album, Voyageur, became Edwards' first album to crack the top 100 and top 40 in the U.S., peaking at #39 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and #2 in Canada. In 2012, Edward's song "A Soft Place To Land" won the SOCAN Songwriting Prize, an annual competition that honours the best song written and released by 'emerging' songwriters over the past year, as voted by the public.^[3] Her musical sound has been compared to Suzanne Vega meets Neil Young.^[4]

Early life

Edwards, the daughter of a diplomat,^[5] spent portions of her youth in Korea^[6] and Switzerland. Her father is Leonard Edwards, former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. At age 5, Edwards began classical violin studies that continued for the next 12 years.^[7] As a teenager she lived overseas, where she spent much of her time listening to her brother's records of Neil Young and Bob Dylan.^[8] Her brother also bought her first record, a Tom Petty album. After high school she decided not to attend post-secondary education, instead opting to play local clubs to pay the bills.

Albums

In 1999, Edwards recorded a six-song EP entitled Building 55 and pressed 500 copies. By the fall of 2000, she was on tour across Canada managing her own gigs. In 2001, she wrote seven of the ten songs for her 2003 debut release Failer.

Edwards played at SXSW in 2002 and was signed to Rounder Records and MapleMusic shortly after. Failer was released in Canada in the fall of 2002 on MapleMusic Recordings.^[9] In January 2003 Failer was released by Rounder Records in the US and internationally. Rolling Stone declared her one of year's most promising new acts and Blender said that Failer's songs possessed "an indefinable pull that makes you love the characters they describe, no matter how fucked up they are." The New York Times praised Edwards as a writer whose songs can "pare situations down to a few dozen words while they push country-rock towards its primal impulses of thump and twang." She made her television network debut on the Late Show with David Letterman where she performed "Six O'Clock News."

In 2005, Edwards released Back to Me, which also garnered considerable critical acclaim, and led to the release of the singles "Back to Me" and "In State". The track "Summerlong" was also featured on the soundtrack of the movie Elizabethtown starring Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst.

Edwards performing at the 2007 NXNE festival

In 2008, Edwards released her third studio album, Asking for Flowers. It was described by the San Francisco Bay Guardian as "her finest album to date",^[10] and was a shortlisted nominee for the 2008 Polaris Music Prize.^[11] In contrast with 2005's Back to Me, on which Edwards relied on her working band, Asking for Flowers predominantly features session musicians.

In fall 2010, Edwards began working on her fourth studio album in Wisconsin. Voyageur was released in January 2012. It includes the single "Change the Sheets," and was co-produced by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver.^[12]

She appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman on January 17, 2012, singing "Change the Sheets" from her new album Voyageur.

Musical collaborations

In 2005, Edwards lent her vocals to the duet "The Plan", recorded with Matt Mays and El Torpedo for their self-titled album.^[13] In 2006, she was nominated for Juno Awards for Songwriter of the Year and Adult Alternative Album of the Year for Back to Me.^[14] In 2007, Edwards worked with John Doe, of the punk rock band X, on his solo album A Year in the Wilderness. She sings on three tracks.^[15]

In 2008 Edwards sang backup vocals on Bryan Adams' album 11, and supported one of his tours. In 2009, she joined Adams on stage to sing one of Adams' songs, "Walk on By".^[16] In 2011 Edwards contributed vocals on Arkells' song "Agent Zero", off their second album Michigan Left. "Soft Place to Land", one of two songs on Edwards' Voyageur album co-written with The Long Winters frontman John Roderick, won the 2012 SOCAN Echo Songwriting Prize.^[17]

Personal life

In 2004 Edwards married guitarist and collaborator Colin Cripps. They divorced in 2011. Edwards was later in a relationship with Justin Vernon, Wisconsin-born singer/songwriter and front-man of the band Bon Iver.^[18] Edwards and Vernon separated in 2012.^[19][20]

Edwards stepped back from the music scene in 2014, launching a coffee house in Stittsville called Quitters along with Rick Tremblay (who was her manager when she worked in a downtown Starbucks in the 1990s).^[21] She insists that she is not leaving music but just taking a break, and that the name Quitters is "kind of tongue-in-cheek".

As of 2018, Edwards has continued to perform sporadically, including a number of new songs.

Discography

Awards and nominations

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kathleen Edwards.

• Kathleen Edwards
• Kathleen Edwards at AllMusic
• Kathleen Edwards discography at Discogs