Kathleen Edwards
May 7, 2008
Knuckleheads Saloon
Better than: A bloody, balls-out hockey brawl
by RICHARD GINTOWT
You have to beat the trains to get to Knuckleheads on time. I squeezed through just before the gates went down last night, breathing a sigh of relief that I wasn't counting boxcars during the beginning of Kathleen Edwards' set.
It's tempting to make some tepid metaphor about trains and country singers, but Edwards isn't exactly a country singer. She hails from the suburbs of Ottawa, Ontario, and there's nothing particularly southern about her music other than the rose-print western shirts that her guitarist and husband Colin Cripps wears. Edwards' road-tested band sounds more like The Tragically Hip than Lucinda Williams. She plays Gibson guitars, not Telecasters. Songwriters who spend every day in 90-degree heat sound fatigued. Edwards sounds like she's ready to go sledding.
Edwards' three records – Failer (2003), Back To Me (2005) and Asking for Flowers (2008) – have all been in my heavy rotation at one point or another. Her voice is sofa king awesome, and her lush arrangements (often featuring three or more guitars) would do Tom Petty proud. Edwards' lyrics are familiar yet quirky, peppered with hockey references and occasional f-bombs.
Last night, in front of a packed house and enough neon beer signs to light a football stadium, Edwards made those songs sound even better. Roaring out of the gate with “In State” and “What Are You Waiting For?,” Edwards and her four-piece band played the role of seasoned pros who weren't taking a shred of the audience's adoration for granted. Cripps and keyboard/guitarist Jim Bryson traded juicy licks all night with 12-string Rickenbacker guitars and whammy bars, but it was Edwards who brought the house down with her guitar solo on “Run.” She hushed the crowd for a couple of captivating acoustic numbers, one of which resembled an old-time sea shanty.
A mile-wide smile shot across Edwards' face when a crowd of two-steppers took the dance floor for “Old Man's War.” “I feel like I'm fulfilling my dream of playing a honky tonk,” she beamed. The chatty singer inspired a round of laughs by debunking a recent No Depression article that mistakenly reported her father was deceased. She also educated the crowd about Marty McSorley, the hockey played who she name-checked in “I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory” (the brute enforcer recently recovered from hip surgery and got back on the ice to shoot a video for the song).
You can catch Edwards and her band on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Friday, May 16. In the meantime, give Asking For Flowers a spin and see if you can keep the goosebumps from creeping 'round.
Critic's notebook
Personal bias: I've been a fan of Edwards since I first heard Back to Me. She's probably my favorite female songwriter of the moment.
Random detail: The only two locals I recognized at the show were music critics for The Star. Get on the Knuckleheads bandwagon ya'll!
By the way: There's nothing more manly than slamming a 24 oz. PBR can and peeing into a plastic trough.
was a really good show. unfortunately I mistakenly set the motion alarm at my house before leaving and feline mischief lead to a call from ADT and my forced early departure.
what was the deal with not showing up for the 90.9 pre-show event and mumbling excuses that ranged from painful hockey videos to thinking it was canceled? quite lame.
Posted at: May 8, 2008 12:51 PM