EDWARDS FINDS TOTAL FREEDOM
Ottawa musician picking up where she left off six long years ago
When Ottawa musician and entrepreneur Kathleen Edwards was asked to share some wisdom with a high school graduating class this year, she advised the young minds to strive for their dreams without fearing either failure or change.
After all, she has the life experience to back up both of those lessons, and now that she’s back to making music, with an excellent new album, Total Freedom, just released, she has had the opportunity to reflect on the twists and turns of her path.
“One piece of advice I wanted to instil is that you never have to worry about failure because failure is actually one of life’s great learning opportunities,” the 42-year-old said in a recent interview.
“And the other thing is you should never worry about wanting to change your mind about what you’re committing your time and energy to. We get really caught up in the idea that because we’ve invested so much time and energy in something we do that the idea of walking away from it is somehow erasing all of the work that you did. I just don’t see it that way now.”
Six years ago, Edwards made the life-altering decision to step away from the music industry after a decade spent building a thriving career as a singer-songwriter, guitarist and recording artist. She released four critically acclaimed albums that earned multiple Juno nominations and toured countries on both sides of the Atlantic.
But she was burned out and struggling with what was eventually diagnosed as clinical depression. Her solution was to return home to the Ottawa area and open a business. Her coffee shop, sporting the tongue-in-cheek name of Quitters, is now established as a community hub in Stittsville, Ont., and is renowned for its laid-back atmosphere and tasty baked goods.
“Saying that I wanted to stop playing music felt like the most terrifying thing that I could have spoken aloud and then when I did it, I just felt immense relief,” Edwards says, recalling the “laser vision” that clicked into place.
“It was exactly the same feeling I had when I was 17 or 18 and on the bus … heading downtown to busk on the streets of the (Ottawa) Byward Market,” she says. “I didn’t see any risk in wanting to do what I wanted to do. It was that same sort of early fire in me that went about getting Quitters up and running.”
A few years into the business, Edwards got a call from Maren Morris, a young Nashville singer, inviting her to the country music capital for a songwriting session. She went, and returned with a new creative spark.
“It was this huge reminder of what was missing from my life, which was just being around creative people,” she says. “There’s something wonderfully energizing and inspiring about being in that space.”
Around the same time, she was invited to open a show at Toronto’s Massey Hall for her pal, Nova Scotia
There’s just no way for me as a performer playing in front of a web stream is going to feel like I’m connecting with anyone.
rocker Matt Mays. The date was a few months away, and Edwards decided she would show up with a batch of new songs.
Those songs became the core of the new album, which starts with a roots rocker of an opening track, Glenfern. Its title is taken from the name of the Hamilton, Ont., street on which Edwards and her ex-husband, guitarist Colin Cripps, lived.
“It’s one of the first songs I wrote for the record and it sets the tone for how I was able to start a new chapter in my life as a recording artist and songwriter,” she says. “That song is all about the gratitude that you have for the people who come in and out of your life, and how you sometimes need time to remember the great things. Or the things that you experienced that were difficult but also wonderfully rewarding.”
The new songs were recorded during sessions in Nashville and Stittsville, where she worked with another dear friend, Jim Bryson, who was instrumental in getting things back on track. Edwards says she wasn’t quite ready to record in Nashville because of a relationship breakdown, and Bryson provided the stability she needed to finish the project.
Edwards is in a new relationship now, happily involved with someone who’s not a musician, and content with the bubble they’ve created. She was keen to get back on the road this fall, but the pandemic has disrupted those plans. Livestreaming, she finds, just isn’t the same.
“There’s just no way for me as a performer playing in front of a web stream is going to feel like I’m connecting with anyone,” she says.
“But connecting is really important and I think that part of my job in the future is going to be instilling the joy of connecting in person back into people’s lives. We’re going to have to take some risks and venues are going to have to open. People are going to have to come to concerts.”