first, kathleen edwards rocks. absolutely no debate or question about it. she rocks. for those not familiar with her, she's one of those little girls (maybe 5'-5'2" & 100-110 lbs) with a big voice and she can drink and cuss (and rock) harder than any man (or woman) twice her size. she is currently touring in support of her (excellent) new record, "asking for flowers" and played headliner's on thursday night, which was a perfect (yet unfortunately, underattended) venue for her and her band, led by husband colin cripps.
this was the third time that i had seen her and while she was excellent everytime, each show has been better than the one before and last night was no exception. about 5:30am (after her show ended about 12:30 am), louisville experienced a very rare event, a 5.4 scale earthquake, followed by a 4.7 aftershock @ about 11:40am, i joked to a co-worker that kathleen rocked the city so hard that it was still shakin' the next morning.
her set was well balanced from her two previous records, "failer" and "back to me" (still my favorite) and leaning heavily towards stuff from "asking for flowers." while her first two nailed me from the first listen, i was a little disapponted with "asking..." on the first pass, but it has grown on me with each additional listen and now holds up very well to her other work.
she opened the show by telling us..."you’ve got to warm up a little bit before you bust a nut” and moved into the beautiful "mercury" (from "failer"), playing an old and well-worn gibson acoustic. we were also treated to her on electric and fiddle/violin, her band was tight and had a great time playing with her/for us. we also got the back story behind "i make the dough, you get the glory" (great one/marty mcsorley) and the live debut of "oh canada."
one of the funniest moments of the night was her telling us after the first couple of songs, "i love playing louisville, this is my beverage mecca" then she bent over, picked up her glass, which we later found out contained woodford reserve and held it up to the audience and said "i'm no diva, but it's great that you don't have to explain what 'bourbon is' in your rider when you play here" to huge applause. then she asked "which way is woodford county?" someone pointed towards the back of the stage and she turned around, took a sip, bowed and blew a kiss in that direction. later in the show, while playing very hard and pacing the stage, she accidentially kicked over her glass of woodford and told us, "oh no! i spilled my bourbon...GOOD NIGHT!" (it was quickly replaced with a smile from a fan up front).
kathleen, like most music that i seem to enjoy, doesn't really fit neatly into any "genre"... not pop, not rock, not alt-country, she's like if you threw them all into a bag, shook it up hard and let it go. and it works. beautifully.
i was able to snag a setlist and she signed it and a couple of pics for me after the show. as she was previously, she was very sweet and personable, thanking me (and everyone else) for coming out and supporting her and her music, such a sweetheart.
i've said often, if you get a chance to see this girl play live. GO! trust me, you will not regret it.
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