Failer cutie

Kathleen Edwards rises above the dysfunction and deals with the dips and swells of success.

By Jimmy Draper

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"I'm actually a really happy person — I'm always cracking jokes and being a smart-ass and a clown," Kathleen Edwards insists. Calling from Toronto, where she's making preparations to head out on an Australian tour before she comes to San Francisco this week, the 26-year-old Hamilton, Ontario, songwriter is quick to point out that, contrary to popular belief, the rather depressing sentiments she expresses in her music aren't necessarily reflective of her true self.

"My happiness is kind of balanced out by my songwriting personality and the kind of songs I write, though," continues Edwards, who indeed displays in conversation a smart, off-the-cuff sense of humor that's both unexpected and reassuring. It'd be slightly unsettling, after all, if she were actually as anguished as her songs suggest. "Maybe I'm not a dark and depressed person," she says. "But when I write, I'm indulging a lot of the darker emotions that I do feel sometimes but that aren't as much a part of me as people think."

It's an easy assumption to make, of course.

On 2003's Failer (Zoë/Rounder), the melodic, Lucinda Williams–indebted debut that made her a cause célèbre in roots-rock circles, Edwards painted a heartbreaking portrait of a woman digging herself out of a seemingly endless cycle of bad decisions. "You spend half your life trying to turn the other half around," she sang in "Six O'Clock News," one of the album's many unnervingly insightful reality checks about excessive drinking, affairs with emotionally unavailable men, and other mistakes people tend to make while navigating their early 20s. Once Edwards acknowledged that a real-life break-up had inspired a few of Failer's songs, however, many people simply read the demise of one particular relationship into the entire album.

"I feel really bad about that," Edwards says. "I think it was kind of hard for the guy I broke up with to be left behind, surrounded by the notion that I was gone and doing all these great things based on us breaking up, while he was still feeling like shit. It's not exactly a nice reminder all the time. He suffered a bit from people's perception that, like, 'Oh, you're the guy who all those songs are written about.' "

The backstory certainly fueled interest in the album, which became one of 2003's most acclaimed debuts and earned Edwards invitations to open for Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and Willie Nelson. Not surprisingly, when it came time to record the follow-up, last year's Back to Me (Zoë/Rounder), there was pressure to have a commercial breakthrough — something that never materialized. "Now that it hasn't happened, it's actually kind of a relief," she says. "I'm happy that I'm sort of back at that place where I was when I first started making Failer, making music for myself again instead of being part of this whole cyclical [music industry] machine."

Still, Back to Me deserved to make Edwards a bigger name. While the song largely remains the same as on Failer, the hooks are sharper and, as on the rollicking, Tom Petty–esque title track, the music is more muscular than ever. Her lyrics aren't quite as driven by dysfunctional relationships this time, however — a potential disappointment for listeners who empathized with her encounters with less-than-impressive men. She hasn't abandoned the subject of romance gone woefully awry, but Edwards — who has since married her guitarist, Colin Cripps — says she's no longer interested in rehashing her past.

"I love the sort of raw adolescence in [Failer's] songs, but I don't want to be 22 forever. I didn't actually enjoy that age," she explains. "I'm happy that I'm a whopping four years older. I'm a little bit more collected now. I'm not flying off the wheel as much."

That's not to say there isn't plenty of anguish and angst on Back to Me. Recorded in the wake of Failer's success, the album chronicles the upheaval in Edwards's life without, mercifully, slipping into self-pity. Rather, Edwards translates her life's new direction into universal songs about displacement, abandonment, and isolation both geographic and emotional. "I think any songwriter uses songs, or certain elements of songs, as self-medication," she says. "I know it's cliché to say that, but I'm no exception to that rule. Songs like 'Away' and 'Copied Keys' are about the intense feelings I had about having to pick up and move my stuff into storage and live out of a van and a suitcase after being the ultimate nester of all time."

In other words, she may have outgrown many of the trials of her early 20s, but Edwards hasn't run out of dark moments to document. "I've got some new songs to play on this tour that I'm excited about. They're pretty depressing, though," she warns, laughing. "I keep picking some bad subjects. But really, does anybody write a great song when nothing could be any better than it is?" *

KATHLEEN EDWARDS

Sat/25, 8 p.m.

Swedish American Hall

2170 Market, SF

$18–$20

(415) 861-5016