Beloved Canadian Singer/Songwriter Returns with Her First Album In Eight Years!

If you ask Kathleen Edwards, the best thing she ever did was quit. By 2014, the singer-songwriter had released four studio albums and amassed widespread critical acclaim. She had been touring since the release of her 2012 album, Voyageur, and the prospect of returning home – only to start writing her way toward another album, and another tour – felt impossibly daunting. She put her guitar away, at least for awhile: she moved back to her hometown of Ottawa and settled down in Stittsville, an old village on the western edge of town. A running inside joke with bandmate Jim Bryson about opening a coffee shop and naming it "Quitters" became reality. For years, the only new music she heard was playing in the background while she served her regulars at the shop, where she slowly started to fall in love with music again.

Edwards makes her long-anticipated return to music with her fifth studio album, Total Freedom. Written and recorded in Canada and Nashville with longtime collaborator/guitarist, Jim Bryson, and Grammy-winning songwriter/producer, Ian Fitchuk, Total Freedom is both a return to form and a "hard reset," one that empowered Edwards to write and perform entirely on her terms. "I didn't want to write songs that were going to keep me in a dark place on stage every night," she says. "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. I have this whole other experience now that grounded me and helped me rebuild my relationship with myself, and writing music. I'm entirely in control and deciding what my course of action is."

For inspiration, she turned to Bob Seger, whose "Against the Wind" struck a chord with her: "The song just reveals itself in such an effortless way. I was like, ‘That's how I want to feel on these songs being written: that's how I want it to feel when I play it start to finish.'" Edwards' cloud-grazing voice and strumming achieve that as she revisits old loves, losses and heartaches in a fresh context, from nostalgic notes of appreciation ("Glenfern," inspired by her relationship with ex-husband, collaborator and friend Colin Cripps) to treatises on grief ("Ashes to Ashes") and slowly disintegrating romance ("Feelings Fade"). Unhesitating in her willingness to confront life's toughest challenges, Edwards finds the beauty in it all - a radical optimism that isn't lost on her as she prepares to release her first album in eight years, and navigate a complete shift in how she runs Quitters, in the midst of a global pandemic. Total Freedom proves that she's ready to adapt – and that she's got staying power, too.