Kathleen Edwards

Kathleen Edwards

A WINNING DEBUT
Kathleen Edwards Makes Her Mark with Failer
Far from a dud, Failer, the debut from singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards, announces a talent on the move. The 24-year-old Canadian exhibits a sure-handed feel for roots-rock and alt-country soundscapes and a Beat sensibility in her narratives, which depict flawed characters struggling for humanity in desperate situations. Musically inclined at an early age, Edwards first studied classical violin and then gravitated toward the guitar in her teens, when she began writing her own songs and playing local clubs in Ottawa. Failer has earned her early comparisons to Lucinda Williams, whose voice Edwards strikingly recalls, and Neil Young, whose folk-rock tone pervades her album. From her home in Canada, Edwards spoke with Barnes & Noble.com's David McGee about her influences, inspirations, and raison d'être as a musical artist.

Barnes & Noble.com: The narratives in your songs -- the characters, their environments and actions -- suggest the Beat writers to me in that they find their humanity in extremes: irrational behavior, extreme vulnerability, extreme gullibility.

Kathleen Edwards: Well, I'm Canadian, and I wrote about Canadians. So there you go. I wrote about people who are from my area. The subject matter is definitely Canadian. I'm going to get in trouble for saying that, but it's the truth. I guess the Beat writers were influenced by Canadians, but we don't just don't know it.

B&N.com: Are there any prose writers, though, that have influenced the way you approach a story? Or does it all come from musical sources?

KE: I don't know if you'd consider him a prose writer, but I certainly do just because I know how he writes, and that's [songwriter] Richard Buckner. I find his writing style -- even though the backdrop is music -- the lyrics are very much prose and very much like Beat prose. Which may not be an opinion that other people share, but I really get that from him.

B&N.com: You've been quick to point out in other interviews that the incidents you write about didn't all happen to you. But where does truth leave off and fiction begin?

KE: To be perfectly honest, a lot of these songs are about personal experiences of mine -- and if they're not personal experiences of mine, there's only one degree of separation. I definitely went through a rough time around the time I wrote the majority of these songs, or just had a big change in my life. And as harsh as they may seem to a second or third party, to me they feel accurate in terms of what I was going through. I mean, there are some songs that obviously are stories, but they were stories I felt were genuine, and I could put myself in the shoes of the people they were happening to. That's maybe why they come across as feeling stark and melancholy.

B&N.com: Was writing these songs in any way a form of salvation for you? There are some tough scenarios described on the record: "Six O'clock News" is about a guy in a standoff with the police who winds up dead on the road; "Westby" is about an affair with an older, married man that goes awry; "Hockey Skates" depicts various emotional disconnects. As all this stuff was happening and you were writing the songs, did the songwriting turn out to be a way for you to get through all the crap going on in your life?

KE: I think I'm one of those people in a relationship who doesn't discuss things. And usually it ends up coming out later in songs -- stuff that I've been pissed about and hadn't talked about. Sometimes I have a hard time finding the right words to deal with problems or to deal with those kinds of feelings. "Six O'clock News" was something I saw on the news. In a period of about three months or so, there were all these guys -- and I don't know why; maybe there was a big shutdown at one of the car manufacturers and guys were losing their jobs or they were getting divorced from their wives and they would go hold them up in their homes with their children. That stuff happens a lot, probably a lot more than we care to recognize. I just put myself in their shoes and asked, What if it was happening to me? That's how I wrote the song, which is probably why it feels like it is about me.

B&N.com: The song "Mercury" is in the middle of the disc, and musically it's very different from the songs before and after it. It's short and atmospheric, so it's like an interlude that's a bit outside the rest of the album's narrative stream.

KE: I'm one of those people who hate songs that drag on and on. I'm very insistent on avoiding cliché sort of arrangements and cliché alignments in lyrics. I think that song is more about one line -- "I want to go get high/the Mercury's parked outside" -- and that's really where the song started. It was a melody I had and a story about something I'd done some years prior to that. It's funny, because a few people have said to me, "That song is exactly what it felt like to go get high in the parking lot in high school." I guess subconsciously that's exactly what I was thinking when I wrote the song.

B&N.com: Two of the most interesting songs on the album also have the most interesting arrangements, using strings: "Hockey Skates" and "National Steel." You studied classical violin for many years, so I'm guessing these string parts were designed in from the beginning.

KE: I always hear arrangements, regardless of whether I'm actually playing them. I think having the ability to play the violin and to figure out string arrangements is just a bonus for me. But you know it's like any arrangement -- I heard it long before and it just didn't matter if I was playing it. The background I have in classical violin makes me more able to put together stuff in my head and play by ear songs and melodies that come into my head.

B&N.com: The use of strings in "National Steel" in particular is striking, because they lend the song a bit of "Eleanor Rigby"–style drama.

KE: That's one of those songs I really love the layering in. It's one I feel you could listen to a number of times and hear something different in it every time. I was pretty happy it came together that way; it's definitely one of my favorite songs on the record.

B&N.com: Whiskeytown's Stranger's Almanac album was a turning point for you. How did the music light a path for you?

KE: It felt like it was effortless. The songs and the melodies were in some ways very simple, but incredibly perfect for the music and for the subjects of the songs. I liked that it didn't try so hard and it just connected -- it connected with me, and the melodies were beautiful and in some ways timeless.

B&N.com: As you found your own style, what other artists influenced your approach?

KE: I'm a huge fan of Aimee Mann. I came to really love her voice. She sings very flat in emotion, and I think what I love about that is that she's clever lyrically, and she makes up for it in that respect. And I love the arrangements of her records. It's like listening to a song over and over and hearing something new every time. I love that aspect of Aimee Mann -- I always sensed I was hearing something different in her arrangements and in her songs, meanings and tones that are sarcastic that you didn't catch on the first ten listens.

B&N.com: Obviously, the Lucinda Williams comparisons are popping up everywhere, but you've said the only Lucinda album you're familiar with is Essence.

KE: Yeah. I've listened to Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, but everything before that, to be honest with you, I haven't listened to. Not because I don't like her. You know, when you get compared to someone consistently -- as much as I respect her and feel that's a huge compliment to be compared to her -- I think you have to consciously distance yourself from that particular comparison, if only for the sake of proving to yourself that you're not trying to emulate that artist. So maybe in that respect I've chosen not to go out and buy her records, even though everyone tells me I would love them. Obviously, the comparison is a huge compliment, and there's no denying that she's amazing. It's a blessing and a curse.

B&N.com: There are 10 songs on Failer, which is kind of short, especially for the CD era. Was it a budget consideration, or did you feel you had said what you wanted to say in 10 songs?

KE: That's exactly it. And I'll be perfectly honest with you: I don't like records that run more than 10, 11 songs. It's too much. When you put 15, 16 tracks out at a time, it's demonstrating that you're prolific and talented, but I like the fact that you don't have to have so much material to prove that you can write 10 good songs. I did have other songs that were recorded and that I liked, but I liked the way what I thought were the 10 best fit together. I did one song called "14 Years and a Long Divorce," and it was a real country song -- kinda hokey, but I liked it. But it didn't fit with the rest of the record, and I find sometimes people are negligent in that respect. I like albums; I don't like a collection of songs. I like albums that work from beginning to end, and that's why I put only 10 songs on this one.

B&N.com: How long has it been from the time you began pursuing your music seriously to Failer being released?

KE: I've been doing it for about six years, mostly building as a local act in my hometown, which is Ottawa. [First] playing open stages, then the owner of the club coming up to me and asking if I'd like to do my own show, and I'm 17 and not even old enough to be in the club, don't even have very many of my own songs, so I'm playing covers to compensate -- pretty much like most people start. I'm incredibly lucky to be where I am now. I feel like I'm skipping a few of my dues.

January 14, 2003