Kathleen Edwards
Born July 11, 1978
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Genres Alternative country, folk
Occupation(s) Musician, songwriter
Instruments Guitar, violin, vocals, bass guitar
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Kathleen Edwards (born July 11, 1978) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and musician. Her 2003 debut album, Failer, contained the singles “Six O’Clock News” and “Hockey Skates”. 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.
Edwards, the daughter of a diplomat, spent portions of her youth in Korea 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. 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. 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. Her musical sound has been compared[by whom? to Suzanne Vega meets Neil Young.
In 2011, she divorced longtime collaborator Colin Cripps and began a relationship with Justin Vernon, Wisconsin-born singer/songwriter and front-man of the band Bon Iver. Edwards and Vernon separated in 2012.
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 Starbuck’s in the 1990s). She insists that she is not leaving music but just taking a break, and that the name Quitters is “kind of tongue-in-cheek”.
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”, and was a shortlisted nominee for the 2008 Polaris Music Prize. In contrast with 2005’s Back to Me, on which Edwards relied on her working band, Asking for Flowers predominantly features session musicians.
Discography
Studio albums
Title Details Peak chart positions
Failer
Release date: January 14, 2003
Label: MapleMusic Recordings
Formats: CD
— — — — —
Back to Me
Release date: March 1, 2005
Label: MapleMusic Recordings
Formats: LP, CD, music download
— 173 6 — —
Asking for Flowers
Release date: March 4, 2008
Label: MapleMusic Recordings
Formats: LP, CD, music download
15 102 1 — —
Voyageur
Release date: January 17, 2012
Label: MapleMusic Recordings
Formats: LP, CD, music download
2 39 — 3 11
“—” denotes releases that did not chart
Extended plays
1999: Building 55
2003: Live from the Bowery Ballroom
2008: Live Session
Singles[edit]
Year Single Album
2003 “Six O’Clock News” Failer
“One More Song the Radio Won’t Like”
2004 “Hockey Skates”
2005 “Back to Me” Back to Me
“In State”
2008 “The Cheapest Key” Asking for Flowers
“I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory”
2011 “Change the Sheets” Voyageur
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