Acclaimed singer, songwriter and musician Kathleen Edwards’ new song, “Birds On A Feeder,” is out now. The song is the latest unveiled from Edwards’ highly anticipated new album, Total Freedom, which will be released August 14 on Dualtone (an Entertainment One Company) and marks her long-awaited return to music.
Co-produced by Edwards, longtime collaborator and guitarist Jim Bryson and Grammy Award-winning producer and musician Ian Fitchuk, Total Freedom marks a major return for Edwards, who took an extended step away from music in 2014. After spending the last six years running her successful small business (a coffee shop, bar and café aptly named Quitters, in her hometown of Stittsville, Ottawa), Edwards is back with a refreshed creative outlook and a new sense of freedom. Across the album’s eleven songs, Edwards revisits past relationships with a new perspective, explores her own resilience and optimism and for the first time pursues what she feels is right rather than what is expected.
“I had no desire to write, no desire to play,” she says of what she refers to as her “working sabbatical.” “It allowed me all the time and space I needed to even just enjoy listening to music again. There were so many times where, if I was thinking about my own writing or playing, my heart just wasn’t in it.” She continues, “I don’t want to write songs that are going to keep me in a dark place for two years. I didn’t have to carry a lot of the pressure of whatever course I was on previously…There’s a pressure sometimes to keep that ball rolling, and that’s what was so freeing about stopping altogether and starting again. I realized I’m entirely in control and deciding what my course of action is.”
Photo credit: Remi Theriault