Essentials: The Top 10 Kathleen Edwards Songs

Whilst not exactly an unknown, perhaps her relatively infrequent album releases are the reason Canadian Kathleen Edwards doesn’t garner more attention. Americana UK writers have done their level best to keep her profile high with recent Classic Clips appearances and the review of her 2020 album “Total Freedom”.

This piece is all about the songs but, by way of an introduction, I would strongly recommend a read of Helen Jones’s terrific piece on Kathleen on this website in February 2020 under the Americana A-Z feature. It gives the background to her early success and the period of her life where clinical depression led to a temporary retirement from the music business. It also gives some context to her relatively parsimonious album releases. In a career that kicked off with 2003’s “Failer” there have been only four subsequent albums, the last being that 2020 offering.

As ever, these song choices are very personal and bear no relation to any chart success or critical acclaim the songs may have attracted but, for those who remain in the dark about the marvellous Kathleen Edwards, it will hopefully prompt a deeper delve into that, admittedly, rather sparse archive.

Number 10: ‘One More Song The Radio Won’t Like’ (from “Failer” 2003)

There was, in the USA, quite a clammer at the time of the release of ‘Failer’. At that time, Edwards recalled, it had been virtually ignored in her native Canada. Edwards was hugely frustrated that the feedback from music business reps was hugely flattering about the record, whilst simultaneously turning it down as not radio-friendly enough. She had finished the album roughly two years prior but couldn’t get anyone to release it. The bitter broadside of ‘One More Song The Radio Won’t Like’, is directed at nay-sayers who refused to take a chance on one of their own.

Number 9: ‘Somewhere Else’ (from “Back To Me” 2005)

Covers are rare on Kathleen Edwards albums, so it is telling that, on her second album, she chose to include this gorgeous Jim Bryson track. Fellow Canadian Bryson has been a constant in Edwards’ musical life; from providing guitar and vocals on her debut, right up to her most recent 2020 album, which he also co-produced. Acclaimed in his native land as a similarly talented singer-songwriter this track both showcases the man’s talents as a songwriter and allows Edwards to reign in her rockier persona a tad. Featuring distinctive brass arrangements, it does not, rather ironically, feature Bryson himself.

Number 8: ‘Copied Keys’ (from “Back To Me” 2005)

From that excellent second album comes this paean to Edwards’ much missed hometown, the lyrics expressing the feelings of homesickness and detachment that many must feel when attempting to assimilate into a new partner’s life and environment, away from the familiar and the loved. “This is not my town and will never be. This is our apartment filled with your things. This is your life; I get copied keys. Try and force a little smile, hold it a little while for you.”

Number 7: ‘Oil Man’s War’ (from “Asking For Flowers” 2008)

One of four tracks from her third album featured here, this inclusion is to recognise a personal debt to the inestimable Bob Harris who, through his championing of the underdog, played this track and thus exposed Edwards to a wider audience. Especially in her earlier days, Edwards was often compared to Lucinda Williams and, when listening to this song, those comparisons don’t sound quite so outlandish.

Number 6: ‘Run’ (from “Asking For Flowers” 2008)

At a gig in Ohio in 2009 Edwards told the story of how her best friend’s mother had confessed that she used to go running in the middle of the night. She would run until she collapsed, exhausted in the street. She felt that when she ran she could feel all her troubles melting away and it was only when exhausted and spent, that she would return home.

Number 5: ‘Asking For Flowers’ (from “Asking For Flowers” 2008)

Of all the songs on the album, Edwards always said that it was the title track that gave her the most pleasure. Recalling a conversation with a woman about a relationship that had, in her own words “gone into the shitter.” It was, she said, like seven years of asking for flowers. When asking what she meant by that the reply came “you can never ask someone to buy you flowers. They have to want to.” The lyrics bite – “Asking you for flowers is like asking you to be nice. Don’t tell me you’re too tired, 10 years I ‘ve been working nights.”

Number 4: ‘I Make The Dough, You Get The Glory’ (from “Asking For Flowers” 2008)

“I had this melody and this line: You were cool and cred like Fogerty, I’m Elvis Presley in the 70s.” Edwards recalls that they were wrapping up recording when she shared the line with her co-producer Jim Scott who told her she had only that evening to write the song as the band was only with them in the studio for one more day. It was the first time that Edwards had written to a deadline and the result is one of her very best.

Number 3: ‘A Soft Place To Land’ (from “Voyageur” 2012)

‘Voyageur’ was, for what it’s worth, Edwards’ most commercially successful album, both in the USA and her native Canada, which is somewhat ironic in that the album is possibly the least radio-friendly of her offerings, with only the one single release coming from it. ‘A Soft Place To land’ is a beautiful, haunting number; a co-write with John Roderick, it won the 2012 SOCAN Echo Songwriting Prize, an annual competition that recognises the best in emerging Canadian music.

Number 2: ‘Hard On Everyone (from “Total Freedom” 2020)

“Total Freedom is having a dog. Total freedom is liking coffee then opening a coffee shop. Total freedom is getting older. Total Freedom is not worrying about what’s happening tomorrow.” Six years after her abrupt step back from the music business and opening a coffee shop Edwards returned to the studio with “Total Freedom”. It was Maren Morris who enticed Edwards back, tempting her into a co-write on a song for Morris’s 2019 “Girl” album. Having dipped her toe back into the water a refreshed and newly re-energised Edwards had the misfortune of timing the new album’s release just as lockdown hit. If her earlier work felt raw at times, the new album felt slicker and more polished without ever suggesting that Edwards’ lay-off had, in some way, compromised her musical soul.

Number 1: ‘Glenfern’ (from “Total Freedom” 2020)

The opening track from the album, this video comes live from Edwards’ own Quitters coffee shop. When asked in 2020 whether she was a musician who owned a coffee shop or a coffee shop owner who sings, Edwards mused that in view of the lockdown timing, it was clear, whichever way she looked at it, that she couldn’t have picked two worse businesses for a pandemic. Edwards sold her business in 2022 and was quoted then as saying she would now be 100% focused on her music again so, three years after that question was posed, it would seem we have an answer.