Kathleen Edwards Found ‘Total Freedom’ After Hanging With Maren Morris in Nashville

This is her first new music since 2012.

Written by Kelly Dearmore
Kathleen Edwards Found ‘Total Freedom’ After Hanging With Maren Morris in Nashville
Kathleen Edwards; Photo credit: Remi Theriault

An unexpected invitation to a Nashville songwriting session helped propel Kathleen Edwards back into music, years after she had seemingly left her guitars in storage forever. In 2017, Edwards had long since found her new groove as owner of Quitters, a coffee shop near her home in Stittsville, Ontario, Canada, when none other than Maren Morris asked her to come to Music City to work on music for her next album, Girl.

At that point Edwards had been a full-time café owner for years and would often go weeks without even going into the room where her guitars were kept. Such a scenario seemed highly unlikely in the decade and a half before, as Edwards had built an enviable career as a critically acclaimed singer-songwriter with a number of stellar albums under her belt.  

Kathleen Edwards; Photo credit: Remi Theriault

But following the release of her 2012 LP Voyageur, music, and the music business, had devolved into a dark drain that Edwards could no longer derive joy and satisfaction from. Deciding to quit music, along with treating her clinical depression and opening Quitters, led to a new existence for Edwards where clarity and purpose took center stage, not the judgement of others as had become the case in the latter days of her music career.

“The investment of energy into what people think you sound like, or what people like about you,” Edwards says now as she looks back on the criticism and comments, she received during her music career’s first era. “None of it matters to how you feel about what you’re doing if you feel like you’re doing good work.”

Indeed, the Nashville writing session with Morris and producer Ian Fitchuk, “turned my pilot light back on” she says. Soon after, the songs for Edwards first album in eight years, Total Freedom, came to light. It’s a brilliant return, filled with the vivid, intimate storytelling she’s long been adored for. Sounds Like Nashville recently caught up with Edwards and spoke about dealing with the pressure of the music business, how owning your own business is a lot like having children, and that fateful Nashville trip.

At any point during your time away from making music did you feel any sort of pressure from fans or anyone else to release new music?

I definitely have never been one of those types of people to put out music just to make others happy. That’s just not something I had to think through at all. About a half a year before I opened Quitters, I said, “I just don’t want to do music anymore,” and that was such a relief. I did worry about the possible disappointment of certain people who had championed me, like my manager, agent and bandmates. I just don’t think that doing something just to do it and slam your head against the wall for it is a good thing for anybody. Once I decided to quit, it was easy to not think about making music.

You seemed to go from having fans wanting you to make your music sound a certain twangy, country way to fans simply wanting you to make music. I guess you can never win sometimes.

I have this really vivid memory of being on tour in Europe when Failer came out. I played big festivals like Glastonbury and this one on Norway where I remember people watching me play were doing that hokey sort of thing where they stick out their knee and slap it and dance around like they were hearing some real country music. It didn’t offend me, but I was kind of shocked because I didn’t think my music was country like that.

I’ve never really thought about the genre of what I’m making in that way, but at the same time, with Voyaguer, I wanted to consciously remove that rootsy, twangy country influence from my other records and do something different. I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. I remember going back to Europe after Voyageur was released and going into a UK HMV and instead of finding that record next to acts like War on Drugs or Sharon Van Etten, who I thought my record was closer to as contemporaries, it was back in the country section next to Steve Earle. Don’t get me wrong, I love that my records are usually found next to Steve Earle’s, but I had put so much conscious energy into making something that I didn’t think could be put into an Americana pigeonhole and it just didn’t matter. I realized there was no point in spending energy on that anymore.

When your record was announced, you were embraced by local media, later sharing how appreciative you were for the kind words and support. What was that day like for you after so many years away?

One thing that has been really good for me since that day that has kept me from getting too caught up in my own shit has been owning a business. Regardless of what is going on with music, the shop needs to be opened in the morning, people will want their coffee, my employees need to be paid and shit’s gonna break and none of that cares if you’re a popular singer on the internet.

Owning your own business sounds a lot like having kids.

I don’t have children, but I think it can be like that for artists who are so used to hearing about themselves all the time. I don’t think I ever had my head up my ass but having the coffee shop has done a good job of offsetting the importance of my own ego. I love having young people work for me because when someone comes into the shop and says, “oh my god, I’m a huge fan, I drove all the way from wherever to see you,” and my staff is like “what the hell?” I put out my first record when they were in grade two. It keeps me grounded, but it also makes the kindness and compliments and the caring about my music from people feel so much more true.

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Tuesday.

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I don’t know many musicians that are morning people. Were the early hours of running a coffee shop hard to get used to?

I’m lucky because my dog has an early internal alarm, so I’ve gotten used to hitting the ground running in the morning. I know people who love being up really late, but I’ve never been like that. When nighttime comes, I’m happy to go to bed. If I sleep in late, I feel like I’m wasting the cay, so it hasn’t been a really big transition. And I love when its eight or nine in the morning, and I’ve been at the café since five, and I feel like I’ve had a full day already.

You were surprised when Maren Morris asked you to do some co-writing with her. As someone who has typically been a solo songwriter, did that experience make you want to do more co-writing?

That was a really serendipitous thing. I came down to Nashville and brought some of my journals with work I had put to bed. I was still invested in what I had written even though I didn’t think any of it would come to light and most of it was from a dark time in my life and Maren made it hers. It was incredibly validating and rewarding to see something I wrote live in another context.

I’m not really a co-writer, but it was a thing that allowed me to be in a room with other creative people for the first time in quite some time. It ended up being this experience that turned my pilot light back on and reminded me that this was really in my wheelhouse and there’s this thing alive in me that I just love accessing. It was a great dip my toe in the water moment.