e833Kathleen Edwards (born July 11, 1978[1]) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and musician. Her 2003 debut album, Failer, contained the singles “Six O’Clock News” and “Hockey Skates”.[2] Her next two albums – Back to Me and Asking for Flowers – both made the Billboard 200 list and reached the top 10 of Billboard’s Top Heatseekers chart. In 2012, Edwards’ fourth studio album, Voyageur, became Edwards’ first album to crack the top 100 and top 40 in the U.S., peaking at #39 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and #2 in Canada. In 2012, Edwards’ song “A Soft Place To Land” won the SOCAN Songwriting Prize, an annual competition that honours the best song written and released by ’emerging’ songwriters over the past year, as voted by the public.[3] Her musical sound has been compared to Suzanne Vega meets Neil Young.[4]
Edwards, the daughter of a diplomat,[5] spent portions of her youth in Korea[6] and Switzerland. Her father is Leonard Edwards, former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. At age 5, Edwards began classical violin studies that continued for the next 12 years.[7] As a teenager she lived overseas, where she spent much of her time listening to her brother’s records of Neil Young and Bob Dylan.[8] Her brother also bought her first record, a Tom Petty album. After high school she decided not to attend post-secondary education, instead opting to play local clubs to pay the bills.
In 1999, Edwards recorded a six-song EP entitled Building 55 and pressed 500 copies. By the fall of 2000, she was on tour across Canada managing her own gigs. In 2001, she wrote seven of the ten songs for her 2003 debut release Failer.
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