Kathleen Edwards fills the Bing with her melodies

Kathleen Edwards has hardly had time to recover from her European tour when touring in the US began and I am so pleased that Portland was on her schedule. I managed to catch her in the Bing Lounge. For those of you not familiar with the Bing Lounge, I have introduced it in previous blog about Big Head Todd and Imelda May.

Kathleen Edwards is a Canadian singer-songwriter who recorded her first album in 2003. She is categorized as alternative country and folk but I find that she is one of those musicians that really defy categorization. I am not a lover of country and yet I find her songs very appealing. I would call her soft rock with some folk thrown in. She is on her fourth album now and rapidly gaining a following. This has been a big year for her already with the release of the album Voyageur and she appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman in January.

She performed the normal set for the Bing. A first number followed by an interview with Inessa, two more numbers, an introduction to the band and then a final number. The time goes all too fast. Her first song was Moving to America.

In the interview Kathleen talked about how different the radio scene is in Canada and how difficult it is to be heard and discovered there. While she said that the radio stations up there have to play a certain amount of Canadian content, it is not representative of the native music scene. There is no regional content or coverage of up and coming bands.

Kathleen grew up in a musical family. Her dad wanted to be Gordon Lightfoot, but with the sex life of Leonard Cohen and her mom was a music teacher. They met singing in a choral group in Ottawa. Her mom had a thing for the choir director, but it turned out he was gay, so her father took advantage of the opening. As a child she learned classical violin.

Thanks Kathleen, thanks KINK.

Brought to you by Brian Bailey

[amazon_enhanced asin=”B005UNDSKQ” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B005MW50QK” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B0007GAENU” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B00007LV7B” /]