2011 may prove to be the year Kathleen Edwards recalls as the twelve months that made the Torontonian singer-songwriter. That said it could just as easily have been the year to break her: despite embarking on a European tour with the universally-venerated Justin Vernon under the household-infiltrating, BRIT-acknowledged, show-stealing, Grammy nomination-sweeping Bon Iver moniker her support slot on the second of two London shows at the Hammersmith Apollo was greeted by the most indecorous indifference one may care to envisage. Similarly, anyone who's ever painstakingly pieced together a record will be all too cognisant of the bristling desire to just release the darn thing once committed to churning tape. However to contextualise and put Kathleen's predicament into perspective, Voyageur, her fourth and finest LP proper was all done and dusted over six months ago and has since been left to get, well, a little dusty. Now, at long last, thankfully for Edwards and aficionados of dumbstriking Americana everywhere its release is imminent...
"I finished the record in May and I think the tracking was finished in June so yeah, it feels like I've been twiddling my thumbs for a couple months now. You invest so much time in a project and you dump a lot of baggage into it and think you're gonna release it out into the world immediately, but in the case of Voyageur it felt a little like the whole thing evaporated for a while back there. It feels good to reach the point at which it's about to come out though, basically."
Explicit frustrations and niggling sensations to gauge the general reaction of the general public aside, did any advantage arise from such a lengthy, and seemingly excruciating delay? Edwards' patent vexation subsides: "When you're making a record you rarely have the opportunity to stand back from it because obviously you're in it from day one. From writing the songs, to in my instance being a co-producer and all that stuff, there was a definite point at which I had completely lost all perspective, and with that any sense of whether it was even good or not any more. So to take a break from it was really nice, and then it was equally so to come back to the material in preparation for my band rehearsals and similar stuff."
An unwantedly extended means to a very much desired end, when it comes to the final product there's a sprightly glee within the songstress: "I really feel as though it's my best work - I feel so proud of it and it challenges me still in the sense of trying to find ways of doing it justice within a live context. That's been great because previous albums have felt a little like live songs committed to record which made them a little bit easier to convert thus as I say, Voyageur has represented more of a challenge, and it's been really rewarding in that sense."
In many respects the way in which we digest and interpret contemporary music – and particularly albums – is of course on end product in place of process. However with Voyageur Edwards set about constructing definitive impressions and moods of flesh to mould about its skeletal musical structure: "I really worked hard even from the moment I was conceptualising what it was that I was wanting to do: it had to be something that was different in a far and away sort of a way from what I'd already done, and I wanted to show that I had a greater capacity for more varied musical styles. I'm sorry - I'm having a hard time trying to articulate it. And actually, that was my problem." Thus she embraced the self-imposed trials surrounding the fabrication of a record which has already received quietly propitious critical acclaim from broadsheets and broadband-clogging independent sites alike. However her perceived status is an element of her personality (or at least public persona) that remains somewhat problematic: "I don't really see myself as the artist I'm often being described as these days. Yes, I write songs and yes, I love roots music and the history of Americana. But that's not really how I regard myself. I would go to like Tallest Man On Earth concerts and his crowd would be filled with 25-30 year old kids. Not kids, but early college/ late high school listeners and I just realised that young listeners love real songs just like anyone else; they love the roots element of music just like anyone else; and it was just that I hadn't found a way to record my songs that did justice to the fact that I feel as though I fit more into this world than that world. This time around I think I really did that."
While we're unfortunately all too aware of this modern love of carefully, categorically compartmentalising whichever form of art it is that we're exposed to on a diurnal basis (and moreover of emotionally slanted hearsay), it'd be seemingly pragmatic to analogise Edwards' latest to the work of the aforementioned Justin Vernon, her bewhiskered rumoured beau and co-producer of Voyageur. His namechecking has become the unfortunate unavoidable, the inexorable inevitable while he himself is, in Kathleen's glinting eyes, "somebody who is sort of at the pinnacle of musical success." Of her rapport with Vernon she remains ambiguous, humble, deferential almost: "I just happen to be one of the people with whom he's worked" she proffers reticently. "There are times when it's an absolute blessing and it's certainly opened a lot of doors for me but the downside is that you feel as though it takes away much of the quality of the work and the world may merely view it as just another notch on his belt. It just makes me feel like saying "um... actually I'm here in the shadows of his name and you know, it's kinda my song..." But I mean that in the way that you take the good with the bad and really, as far as I'm concerned, there is no out-and-out bad."
Amorous inclinations aside, the coming together of the pair within a musical context was rendered wholly explicit when Edwards packed together a guitar or two, strapped in as many accompanying musicians for the ride, and set sail for Europe to open up for Bon Iver. Come late October she would wind up in west London, the svelte figure onstage a mere speck in "an impossibly large room". It was something of a harrowing experience for the enthralled onlooker, and one of Edwards' more testing moments of the tour: "To come out and play for a band as heavily anticipated as Bon Iver were that night and to be able to connect... I mean there were people listening down the front but it's hard to feel as though you're actually playing to them when there's 5,000 other people in that room who just aren't there to see you. It's a losing battle. I could've come out and done a 10-minute fucking Steve Vai guitar solo and I would've garnered the same reaction, you know? There were some other shows on that tour during which people were dead silent and other nights people were just plain chatty. It wasn't the easiest thing to do, but it's a good way to cut your teeth!"
Whatever the fundamental basis of their partnership, both parties seem contented with the work and the intentions behind their rather comprehensive collaboration: "Justin knows my motives weren't based on working with him because of his name and to me, the quality of the work feels like the reward. So all the other stuff, how people talk about it or how it gets heard, and who's listening to it and for what reason, that's uncontrollable. And effectively it doesn't matter: if someone's willing to listen to it because his name's on it then I'm really lucky. And I have to remember and respect that."
She continues, determined, intrepid, undaunted: "I just have to go out and do my thing and take or leave all that other stuff. But I think the nice thing is that this isn't my first record, and nor is it the first time I've toured so I feel as though I'm fairly well grounded on my own two feet. However with this record in particular all my shit is now out there for people to discover. And when you already feel vulnerable about the mistakes you've made or the things you've done and you're subsequently trying to change as a person, it's a very raw and vulnerable time." Unprovoked, thoughts ricochet back almost instantaneously – or perhaps instinctively – to Vernon's divine intervention: "I'm of course extremely grateful for this opportunity. Justin's... [she stutters, choked up sentiment barely audible above the crackling drone of the wireless] you know, the Bon Iver thing... it's kinda like every musician's dream: they make the records they wanna make, they do everything on their own terms, and they're very..." At this precise moment the train of thought grinds to a halting silence.
Irrespective whatever their intimacy, professionally, Edwards seems to be Bon Iver's most charmingly devout fan. Her words and sentiments again gathering momentum, she hypothesises: "Let me put it this way: the other day my friend Julie said to me: "You know, there are so many people putting out music these days, and there are so many records. Every-fucking-body and his cousin is like in a band and putting out a song or something and every one needs context in order that we're able to acknowledge what makes it different from anybody else's. So everyone has a story. But the nice thing is that your story is real. It's true; it's not been tweaked, distorted, nor pumped up to be something that more people will pay attention to. It came from a really true place, and you never have to apologise for that." So if Justin's name is on every review of everything I do, so be it. That's not something I have any say in. But I can also go to sleep at night thinking you know what, all this stuff came from a truly real, honest, and earnest place. And I don't feel bad about any of that."
Something she may conceivably still feel a little uncertain about however is the election to keep soft-as-snow-underfoot single Wapusk separate from the completed LP and its finalised tracklisting. Despite its subtle majesty and wispy brilliance, she remains resolute: "Wapusk isn't on there because I wanted the record to be ten songs long. And when I was really having to make some hard decisions about whether it was going to be this song or that song, I realised I could put Wapusk out prior to the full release as a teaser. You know, still release it and have it as a part of this project we've been working on. We just didn't feel as though it had to be on the final record." Musically its acoustic dwindle is a little removed from Voyageur as a gloriously fully-formed whole, but thematically too it is of another space, another time: "Wapusk was rooted in a different experience. Voyageur, meanwhile, is about a particular snapshot in time and it purely didn't fall into that timeframe. It sat aside from that period and it was also the first track that he [Vernon] and I worked on before we were even co-producing a record together. As a result there's something that sets that track aside for me. I mean I really love it but I also didn't put it on the record because I didn't think it was good enough to be on there."
The key to the ignition that judders the bounding Cadillac of a record that is Voyageur into slick locomotion is Empty Threat, during which Edwards rubbishes the notion of "moving to America", jovially relegating it to the realm of nonsense. However when questioned as to how full a threat it may have become in the past six months or so, Edwards concedes: "You'd be right in thinking that I'm thinking about it [relocating to the US of A]. I live in Toronto though. This is my home. But I'm currently very good at writing my own prophecy." Whether or not this prognostication will result in Edwards fulfilling a geographical relocation southwards, her identity as a Canadian – albeit one who embodies a particularly seasoned wanderer – plays an imperative part both in her music and her essence: "My two biggest influences are Canadian geography and sex in Canada, even if so much of my writing process occurs while I'm moving around the place. It's difficult to explain why me being Canadian has had such an impactive influence on me, but it just has. It's the little details: it's like when you live on a street, and every day you leave your house, and you walk down your street, and every day you look at the same houses, and you see the same front doors, and there's this familiarity. But there's always something you notice that's different, a little detail that you'd never previously twigged. And then the next day when you're walking down that same street you recognise it as part of your association with that walk, the new detail. And I feel as though Canada's like that for me. There's all these details of my childhood and my everyday life, and they build and build to create this image in your life, this root system in your heart and so much of that is just based on where you're from. And I think that's true for everybody."
Whether it be national newspapers or Canadian banknotes ("they're so cute! They're pink! And blue!" she later chirps with youthful exuberance), if the record may paddle in the shallow ends of Americana it's indubitably and authentically bathed in Canada. However once upon a time Edwards entertained the thought that it might be "the last kick of the can." At 33 years of age and with a decade of relatively tireless plugging already in the trunk retirement's hardly beckoning, although her candid admission instils a certain degree of melancholy: "I thought to myself: "If this is the last record I get to make, I gotta make it count." Then once it was finished there were times at which I reflected: "You know, Springsteen didn't make Born To Run 'til his third record", and that was like a launchpad for him. It represented the beginning of so much. A big record for me in a similar sort of a way in the last two/ three years was The National's High Violet. It was huge and made such a significant impact on me: I had tried tirelessly to be into that band before, and I tried to listen to their older records yet it never really grabbed me. And then when that record came out I got it. It became my entry point, and I love that record so much. It allowed me to then go back into the older material and I got it all. Is that what's gonna happen to me? I don't know. But I feel very validated knowing that I've done something that I believe to be a better representation – or at least a very comprehensive presentation – of who I am both as a person and a musician and I really worked hard to be more diverse musically this time. And I think I did it. If this is the last record I ever make, then so be it."
Voyageur is released via Rounder Records on Monday, January 23rd prior to Kathleen's return to London to play Islington's very own exorbitantly branded O2 Academy come February 28th.
Voyageur is released via Rounder Records on Monday, January 23rd prior to Kathleen's return to London to play Islington's very own exorbitantly branded O2 Academy come February 28th.
