Kathleen Edwards

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.

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.

In November 2019, Edwards released "It's Christmastime (Let's Just Survive)", her first new single since Voyageur, on the Dualtone Records compilation album A Dualtone Christmas.[13]

In May 2020, Edwards released the single "Options Open" and announced Total Freedom, her first new album in eight years.[14] The album was released on August 14, 2020.[15]

In 2005, Edwards lent her vocals to the duet "The Plan", recorded with Matt Mays and El Torpedo for their self-titled album.[16] In 2006, she was nominated for Juno Awards for Songwriter of the Year and Adult Alternative Album of the Year for Back to Me.[17] 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.[18] She opened for Willie Nelson in Saskatoon.

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".[19] 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.[20]

She co-wrote the song "Good Woman", from Maren Morris's 2019 album Girl.[14]

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.[21] Edwards and Vernon separated in 2012.[22][23]

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).[24] She insisted 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 continued to perform sporadically, including a number of new songs.[25] In August 2019, following the suicide of American singer-songwriter Neal Casal, Edwards opened up on Twitter about the struggle with depression that led her to take time away from her music career.[26]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kathleen Edwards.

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