February 13, 2009 - Trinity St. Paul's Church, Toronto
By Rob Del Mundo
She didn't have to ask for flowers.
Ten minutes into her performance at Toronto's Trinity St. Paul Church on Friday night, Ottawa-born musician Kathleen Edwards proudly displayed a bouquet of red roses left for her by her husband and band-mate, guitarist Colin Cripps, who had the night off.
Flanked by six-stringers Jim Bryson and Gord Tough, Edwards thrilled the sell-out gathering with a 90-minute mainly acoustic set largely bolstered by songs from her third full-length release Asking For Flowers, which was recently nominated for a Juno Award for Adult Alternative Album of the Year.
"I'm drinking water tonight, because I know you can't drink," quipped Edwards as she acknowledged the sellout crowd and the collective presence of everyone inside a place of worship. The 30-year-old outspoken artist with a penchant for dropping more the occasional F-bomb during a live performance (this is the woman who named her company Potty Mouth Productions) managed to keep her four-letter words mostly in check, for the evening.
Edwards and Bryson engaged in their usual on-stage bantering that is evident of their strength as long-time collaborators. Edwards acknowledged Bryson as the subject of her song "I Make The Dough, You Get The Glory", for which a popular hockey-themed music video was filmed last year at St. Michael's College School Arena (a ten-minute drive from last night's venue). Immediately after playing "Glory", Edwards invited, or shall we say goaded, Bryson into performing a creation of his own; a number with a title reminiscent of cliched country music: "She Got The Diamonds, I Got The Shaft".
Easily the best song of the evening was Edwards' rendition of "Run", a haunting track from Asking For Flowers that displayed Edwards' raw energetic vocals - belting out lines such as "And my heart nearly burst right of my chest, and it felt so good to know I wasn't dead", followed by a guitar and harmonica solo played at a decreased tempo, capturing a mood of morbidity.
Not to be confused with Trinity Church - six subway stops away where the Cowboy Junkies recorded their debut album - the Trinity St. Paul's venue provided remarkable acoustics, enhancing the experience of ornament-laden tracks such as "Copied Keys" and "Scared At Night". From a vantage point in a second-row pew close to one of the stage speakers, it wasn't difficult to get mesmerized by the harmonies in the tear-jerker "Summerlong", which was lent to the soundtrack of the Orlando Bloom / Kirsten Dunst chick-flick "Elizabethtown".
A comedic storyteller, Edwards entertained the crowd with an anecdote about being held up at customs by a U.S. border guard. Overly suspicious about her concert merchandise, and oblivious to her career which has included performances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Late Show with David Letterman, the border guard relented to stamp Edwards' passport only after hearing that she has toured with Willie Nelson. While Edwards did not come out and call her interrogator a 'redneck', she wasn't surprised upon hearing that he listened "only to country music".
There were scant weak spots to be found in the performance, though Edwards appeared to be unhappy with her guitars' tuning on a couple of occasions. "I need a guitar tech", she grumbled towards the end of the main set. She even half-apologized for a stumble on the usually reliable track "The Cheapest Key" - the first single from Asking For Flowers, which was delivered flawlessly on Letterman's show last April, but seemed unpolished on this night.
Edwards introduced a pair of new songs, "House Full of Empty Rooms" and "Smile", which have been getting plenty of play time on her current North American tour that continues on Valentine's Day in her hometown of Ottawa.
"Smile" was the first song in a three-set encore, during which Edwards curiously seemed to be fighting back tears of emotion as she played the slow ballad "Hockey Skates".
She explained to the audience that she had spotted a friend in the crowd clutching a newborn baby. Upon stating that she desired her own womb to be 'active', Edwards realized that she probably volunteered too much information.
Maybe, but fans of her music can never be overloaded with too much of Kathleen.
Set list:
Buffalo
In State
Asking For Flowers
Copied Keys
Summerlong
I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory
She Got the Diamonds, I Got The Shaft (Jim Bryson lead, Kathleen w/ backing vocal)
Run
House Full of Empty Rooms (new)
Are the Good Times Really Over (Merle Haggard cover)
Somewhere Else
Six O'clock News
Scared At Night
The Cheapest Key
Back To Me
Encore:
Smile (new)
Hockey Skates
Your Love (The Outfield cover)
Kathleen Edwards plays to a sellout crowd at Trinity St. Paul's Church, Feb. 13, 2009.
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