Canadian singer Kathleen Edwards respects her fellow female singers, but prefers songs by or about men, she tells Tony Clayton-Lea.
She's strong-willed and stubborn, and a classically trained violinist who traded in her bow for a guitar pick. She is the daughter of a Canadian diplomat who named her publishing company Pottymouth. At 26, Kathleen Edwards is a bona fide music industry success story, albeit one that hasn't yet crossed over into the mainstream.
Yet it shouldn't be too long before her mixture of rough-hewn, Americana-tinged rock/pop makes the journey from one side to the other. Reference points (for those that really need them) would include Tom Petty, Lucinda Williams, Neil Young and Sheryl Crow, but you'd need to be firmly reminded that Edwards is very much her own person.
But really - Pottymouth?
"It was my nickname; when I was younger I used to swear all the time. I'm reformed, though; I've learned some new words. I think when I'm nervous I swear a lot. As I've gotten older I realised that swearing is a substitute for lack of vocabulary; or maybe it's something you fall back on in times of stress. Frankly, I'd rather sound as if I've read a book or two than not."
There are no airs or graces about Edwards - what you see is what you get: smart intellect, gamine features, a natural disposition toward the hard and soft of whatever life throws at you. Rumour has it she's something of a tough cookie - certainly, some of her songs would confirm this. It's a valid enough perception, she agrees, and is indicative of the conflict she experiences with being branded as no more and no less than a female singer-songwriter (and all the stereotypical niceties that such branding can imply).
"So many female singer-songwriters are very much ladies," she responds with a bit of a lemon face and a drawn-out "l-a-i-d-e-e-e-e-z". "As much as I don't have a problem with that, I know I'm not really like that; in fact, I'm a bit of a tomboy. I also think there are so many women out there who have sweet and delicate Jewel-esque stage personas and that doesn't appeal to me. My influences are largely men - people like Tom Petty, Neil Young, Richard Buckner, John Prine. I never wanted to be one of those girly-girls who get up on stage and whistle like a bird."
While she admits to having liked assertive singers such as Sinead O'Connor, Ani Di Franco and Annie Lennox as a teenager, she says she simply prefers songs written by men. She also clearly likes writing songs about men: all kinds of them figure in her songs, mostly the bad kind with Jim Beam on their breath and cheating on their minds.
The songs, she confirms, are based on relationships, but they are no more than embellishments of certain personal situations she has had experience of. "Sometimes it can be difficult to write songs when I know that the people I surround myself with are aware that the songs could be about them - my husband, for instance, is also the guitarist in the band. It's impossible for me not to have songs to write about my partner in life. It's a source of material, yes, but I've always worried that settling down into a relationship would be the cause for having less and less good relationship-based material for songs. I'd like to rise above my lifestyle being an easy source of material, and to dig deeper."
But then, she says, "life is about relationships; they're always present, and there will always be ex-boyfriends." Hopefully not ex-husbands? "We're not even under our first year; I genuinely feel that he's the person I'll be spending my life with. It's an intense thing, though, being in a band - sometimes mates can't even get along. He's older than me so he brings a lot of perspective to things. There's so much rubbish in this industry that isn't worth the time, and therefore so much time is invested for nothing. Having someone you can trust to direct you in certain areas, based on their experience, is fantastic."
Music, says Edwards, is the one thing that set her apart from family and friends, "the one thing that I knew was special about me." According to her, wanting to be a working musician was a foreign concept; performing in her teenage years was nothing more demanding than playing James Taylor songs around summer campfires. Her own attempts at writing at this time were, she says with characteristic honesty, "terrible".
Slowly, however, she realised (and here comes another lemon face) that "the willowy, poetry-writing, hippie-chick thing didn't do it for me." Taking a leaf or three out of Ani Di Franco's man-baiting manifesto, Edwards honed lyrics that slowly dispensed with cliches.
"I don't relate to Di Franco's thing at all now, but part of her being an influence was that I didn't want to write fluff, I wanted everything to count. Essentially, I wanted my lyrics to be more like conversations, lyrics that would say something about real life."
It seems her spunky, individual and highly literate streak (with one or two swear words, mind) is paying off. Her two albums to date, 2003's Failer and this year's Back to Me are very much the sum of their own distinctive parts.
"I'm doing what sounds good to me," she says. "I don't want to be anyone else. All the time I hear Lucinda Williams as a reference point, and it's a huge compliment, but it's something I don't hear. Tom Petty? Yes, I feel like I've ripped him off, and that I'm wearing his influences on my sleeve, but no one has said that - yet. I've been very lucky in that overall I feel I've been very well received. It hasn't taken me 10 records to be recognised as having done something good, but at the same time I feel I could be a lot better."
Sometimes, Edwards says, she worries that the avalanche of positive responses, from critics and fans alike, might be too much of a good thing. "I'm only 26," she remarks. "I'd like to be, say, 56 before someone says I've just made the best record of my career."
Failer and Back to Me are on the Independent label