Tag Archives: Kathleen Edwards

Live Reviews

Kathleen Edwards – Lighthouse Arts Centre, Halifax, Canada 1st August 2026

Kathleen Edwards does not remember her previous concert stop off in Halifax with much warmth. Such is the feelgood happiness in the room tonight though, she is prepared to recall the now, thanks to passing time, amusing story for this audience. It was back around 2012 and was easily one of the weirdest weeks of her life. It turns out that before the show Kathleen had got stung by a wasp and all hell broke loose. The singer actually ended up in ER with a full body issue. “The stocks of camomile lotion rocketed that week because of me,” she jokes. By the time they all got to Halifax for the gig she was so messed up by the mix of Benadryl and steroids, due to the reaction to the sting, that the punch-drunk performer ripped her guitar off in the middle of the show and somehow managed to smash herself in the head. This resulted in a goose egg and a concussion which stayed with the stricken songwriter for the remainder of that tour.

The anecdote is arguably a good metaphor for the way the life of a working musician was beating Kathleen around at the time, leaving its scars and taking its toll. She sings as much in tonight’s wistful rendition of ‘Glenfern,’ extended to incorporate a heartfelt hello to the large audience, but this is a bad indictment on the modern-day mess of her industry that it preceded a period when Edwards walked away from music altogether to go and run a coffee shop. In my opinion, an artist of her calibre and repute should have been appropriately rewarded for her work, enjoying protection from the pressures and stresses of simply maintaining a career and carrying on. That struggle does permeate the music she has produced since stepping back into the ring with 2020’s ‘Total Freedom.’ Launching ‘Save Your Soul’ from last years ‘Billionaire’ album, there is more than a hint of foreboding at those going after fools’ gold with its cautionary refrain “who’s gonna save your soul when your money’s no good?” From the same album we are treated to ‘Say Goodbye, Tell No One’ – already one of the all-time great turning away songs – as the sight and sound of Kathleen brandishing an electric guitar in a full band show and nailing every number feels like a real privilege. Acts this good should be packing out stadiums (regrettably acts nowhere near as classy as this frequently do fill stadiums) and yet here we are in a cool Canadian arts theatre with a singer songwriter in the classic Tom Petty, Lucinda Williams mould taking full advantage of a deep, rich back catalogue and appearing to be as elevated by the experience as we are.

It does feel like all in attendance have chanced upon the secret place where the good stuff is happening. Earlier in the day we had wandered the streets of Halifax, soaking up a city that was absolutely heaving with holiday weekend entertainment from buskers to amusements then later fireworks that sounded like a war zone. Kathleen tells us she had checked out the local area too, enjoying her dream breakfast at ‘Steve-O-Reno’s’ and inviting the owner, who registers her presence with a shout out, to the gig tonight. It is a nice, empathetic touch from someone who put heart and soul into running her own coffee business and the song she dedicates to her guest, ‘Asking For Flowers,’ is a similarly switched on lament. The country ballad template of the tune allows space for the key line to really register. “Asking for flowers is like asking you to be nice” hits so hard because it feels like it is sourced from a real place, a low hanging piece of raw emotion that had to be picked. Her impressive range too is illustrated when playing a violin solo on the brooding ‘Goodnight California’, but such is Kathleen’s connection to this line up, she is happy to let the number fully hit the heights with the entire bands combined energy and telepathy, especially the Crazy Horse-like guitar soloing.

This band can rock out with force as well, the delicious riffing on last years ‘When The Truth Comes Out’ earning guitarist Gordon Tough a shout out and when reaching back to some of the oldest tunes in her catalogue, like on ‘Back To Me,’ the same stimulating energy pumps us into the present moment, showing how the craft in Kathleen’s writing has been of a higher stripe right from the outset. She is in a real sharing mood tonight too, we learn, for example, that the seed of ‘Little Red Ranger’ was Kathleen trying to manifest a vision of the song she can imagine singing when finally treading the boards at Massey Hall, but most tellingly the generosity is evident between the players on stage as scintillating keyboard and pedal steel solos own their place in the spotlight. Pounding keys provide the pulse of momentum as the set peaks through ‘Change The Sheets’ followed by ‘Six O’Clock News’ which mines the electric wild mercury sound, forever hot currency when tapped into like this. To finish things off the encore is the decisive one-two punch of early classic ‘Mercury’ followed by a lilting cover of Neil Young’s ‘Powderfinger,’ the extended soloing of which only served to underline the quality in the playing of the whole group. This was just one of those rare nights when everything, from performer to group to location to sound to feeling to response, came together so incredibly well. Memorable.

Words: Danny Neill Photos: Sophie Reichert

You can buy Kathleen Edwards latest record and other releases via this link: https://kathleenedwards.bandcamp.com/music

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Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 2nd February 2026

The Marsh Family Group – Minnesota

This weeks batch of new music recommendations are dominated by artists responding in song to events that have unfolded in Minneapolis over the past couple of weeks. To start with we have a family group from Kent who first found themselves an audience posting humorous internet song parodies during the pandemic lockdowns. This, however, is a change of tone released as a protest to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. It is a re-working of the sixties flower-power Scott McKenzie hit ‘San Francisco,’ written by John Phillips, with new lyrics and some extra instrument parts written played over the originals back bone. The family say they chose it “because of its link to protest, its soaring refrains, its simplicity, its earnestness, and its celebration of love and solidarity. Taking on the guns, masks, fear, and falsehoods requires more than flowers and songs. But they are powerful nonetheless, especially if they remind folk of previous generations that navigated trauma, and that you are not alone.”

Bruce Springsteen – Streets Of Minneapolis

Bruce explains the writing of his new protest anthem, composed in the style of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, during the intro to its live debut featured in this clip. He mentions voicing his concerns that it might be “a bit soapboxey” to Tom Morello who brilliantly re-assured The Boss that, although nuance has a place, “sometimes you’ve got to kick them in the teeth.” It looks like the direct approach has cut through because as of yesterday the song was top of the US iTunes Top Songs chart. The version here is not the only one available as Bruce also recorded the song in the studio last weekend, the day after he wrote it, then got it immediately released, thus echoing the speed that songs used to enter circulation back in the days when the protest movement was a vital source of topical, social and political information.

Billy Bragg – City Of Heroes

If there is one artist who has unreservedly held onto the belief that a song can make a difference, then it has to be Billy Bragg. He knows full well that it only takes a handful of good people to bring about change and he stands in solidarity with those paying the ultimate price against injustice. Of ‘City Of Heroes’ he had this to say. “I wrote this song yesterday as a tribute to the bravery of the people of Minneapolis who, knowing that these trigger happy ICE thugs operate with seeming impunity in their midst, are still willing to put themselves in harms way to defend their community. Their resistance is an inspiration to us all.”

Yo La Tengo – Big Crime

Here is a recent live clip from one of America’s greatest ever bands, captured in the final days of 2025 covering a still very new Neil Young song taking aim at Trump’s administration in a deliberately unfiltered manner. With a similar sense of urgency to all the tracks featured so far this week, Neil’s version was recorded at a soundcheck and released with speed as a standalone single. “No more great again” is sung repeatedly as electric guitars bring the turbulence of the times to the foreground. In that sense, there could be no finer band than Yo La Tengo to pour some water on this seed, helping it spread its message to more and more ears with their own undeniable conviction.

Kathleen Edwards – Say Goodbye, Tell No One

Kathleen is one of America’s greatest living songwriters, which might sound like I am indulging in a bit of hyperbole but just listen to any of her records and then try and tell me I’m wrong. This is a live rendition of a song from last years ‘Billionaire’ album recorded at Jack Kerouac House. Kathleen says of the experienc playing there that walking in “was an incredible feeling, to step on the terrazzo floor down the hallway and into the rooms where he lived, to sit in a chair he also sat in many a night. A house preserved like a time stamp – mid-century coloured curtains, a typewriter still sitting in one of the bedrooms. His story is complicated, but compelling and his books ‘The Dharma Bums’ and ‘On The Road’ captured my imagination as a high school student and the vagabond hippie canoe kid who eventually became a songwriter.”

The Molotovs – Today’s Gonna Be Our Day

I admit I approached this band with caution because they appear to be the recipients of a great deal of media hype at the moment. Not only that but after one look at them, without even hearing a note, I knew exactly what they were going to sound like. Paul Weller and The Jam, to put it bluntly. But then, I also had to think, so what? After all, Weller himself was blatantly influenced in looks, style, sound and attitude by the Small Faces Steve Marriott when he started out and his career evolved into one of the UKs most musically celebrated. Weller also went on to be a voice of political activism, a point which also got me thinking about The Molotovs, because the one noticeable thing about the topical songs I have highlighted this week is that they are mostly coming from the old guard. So maybe it is bands like this, inspiring a younger audience, who can pick up the baton at some stage? The main reason I have included them though is the music. With the crunching riffs and hooks aplenty that are on display here, they have got the basics right and really, what better place to start could there possibly be?

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Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 16th June 2025

Ron Sexsmith – Don’t Lose Sight

Canadian songwriter Ron continues to evolve and refine his craft with another new album called ‘Hangover Terrace’ set for release in August. His music can be as laid back and sleepy sounding as that weary expression he seems to perpetually wear on his face but that should not obscure the fact that his stock is song composition of the highest order. Ron can command the channels interlinking the major and minor keys with a melodic stitching that is deceptively advanced and the end result is frequently a song, such as that heard here, that was waiting for the right artist with enough range and dexterity to pull it into existence; don’t lose sight of the great songsmith’s still in our midst.

BC Camplight – Where You Taking My Baby?

BC Camplight is the performing identity of songwriter Brian Christinzio and he has used this platform to heart-wrenching effect in recent times to produce a piano-led style of confessional indie-rock that seems to delve deep into the mental, emotional and psychological core of his very being. That journey is clearly still unfolding on the new, soon to be released on Bella Union, ‘A Sober Conversation’ album in which, as heard here, among other concerns Brian deals with the trauma of re-connecting to loved ones following therapy brought on by fall outs, lost contacts, misunderstanding and hurt. If all this sounds heavy going though do not turn away, for his flare on the piano and ear for a tune in general make the music of BC Camplight a reliably deep, entertaining and ultimately rewarding experience.

Girl Group – Yay! Saturday

This is taken from Girl Group’s debut EP ‘Think They’re Looking, Let’s Perform’ and is buzzing with the same kind of feminist, hook driven pop energy previously heard from Wet Leg or Lily Allen. They are a relatively new five piece who, on this evidence, are alive with ideas and capable of painting vivid audio pictures that present animated versions of the lives they and their peer groups experience, in this case a long night out that gets messy. It is worth noting too that they are all singers and each member contributes to the writing too, so potentially the ideas will never be in short supply with a well of creative energy like this, there is a lot of promise here.

Night Beats – Behind The Green Door

And the beat goes on with another fine release from an ever dependable name in psych-inflected bluesy rock, Danny Lee Blackwell’s rollin’ and tumblin’ electric circus that is the Night Beats. ‘Behind The Green Door’ is the bands latest single and is out digitally now and on limited 7″ vinyl. Even though the backbone of Night Beats music is always retained, the primitive beats and the ubiquitous green fuzz of the guitar, there is always something different to delight in as well, on this occasion a decidedly Lynch-like panorama and a widescreen cinematic sound that could place this in the soundtrack to some obscure sixties b-movie, if not for the fact that it belongs firmly in the here and now as well.

Kathleen Edwards – 6 O’Clock News

The news that Kathleen Edwards is releasing a new album called ‘Billionaire’ on August 22nd produced by Jason Isbell and Gena Johnson, is very welcome indeed. It is described as harking back to her very first album, ‘Failer,’ with razor sharp lyrical observations and relatable real life tales. Two new songs, ‘Save Your Soul’ and ‘Say Goodbye, Tell No One’ are ready to hear online already and I will get to them soon enough but for now, let’s enjoy this recent live performance of the opening track from that aforementioned brilliant 2003 debut release.

Edith Frost – That’s What It’s Like To Be Lonesome

And to finish things off this week, here is another highly rated artist who has made a return in 2025, but this time it is someone who has ushered herself back into the ring with very little fanfare or hullabaloo. Edith Frost was one of the essential American Singer-songwriters around the start of the 2000’s earning herself deserved comparisons to singers like Elliott Smith but her new album ‘In Space’, which I am going to be checking out for the first time this coming week having only just come across it way below the surface, is her first in nineteen years. Here she is posting on her own YouTube channel a cover version of an old Jean Shepard song and it is as lush and moving as I always recalled Edith to be a couple of decades ago, it feels good to come across her once more.

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