Singer/songwriter Kathleen Edwards explores grief on latest album

Nowadays, the term billionaire has taken on a negative sheen thanks to modern-day oligarchs like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. For singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards, who dubbed her new studio album “Billionaire,” it’s high time to take that term back.

The Canadian singer/songwriter’s raison d’être is rooted in the grief over losing Amanda, a young woman who passed away at age 26 from a brain aneurysm. A college student who started out working at Edward’s Ottawa coffee shop Quitters, Amanda eventually became a cherished friend, and the loss drove Edwards to write a song that found her rethinking what the term billionaire meant to her.

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“It was pretty much the first song I wrote when I was dealing with a great amount of grief, sadness and shock over the loss of this woman who I was very close to,” Edwards said in an early October interview. “I think the thing that came out of it was this incredible sadness. She was such a gift to the world, and I was just kind of caught up in the things she didn’t get to do in her life. And all the people who didn’t get to yet know her and all of those pictures of her that will last forever and stopped at a certain time in her life. It was this very, very deep end of the ocean that I felt grief in that was a volume of things that felt so cruel and unfair about her dying,” she added. “I kept telling my spouse how much she changed my life and enriched me.”

“I kind of ended up one day saying this line which is, ‘If this feeling were a currency / I would be a billionaire,’” Edwards added. “I don’t mind provoking the conversation about the billionaire word that seems to have become this word that suggests greed, selfishness, narcissism and dysfunctional people in society.”

“Billionaire,” Edwards’ first studio outing since 2020’s “Total Freedom,” was produced by Jason Isbell and Gena Johnson, whose credits include John Prine, Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile and The Highwomen. Isbell also brought in members of his band, the 400 Unit, to back Edwards on these 10 songs. The match of producers and artist fits hand-in-glove and hits all the right spots, be it on the poignant title cut with its perfect juxtaposition of raw guitar and soaring strings or the ethereal twang that infuses the chugging “Say Goodbye, Tell No One,” which reflects Edwards’ decision to walk away from owning a café and returning to her true calling as an artist after a self-imposed exile.

Elsewhere, Edwards penned “FLA,” a chugging nugget that is an ode to her new home of Florida, while closing cut “Pine” is a ruminative confession that finds Edwards going through the process of moving on from heartbreak.

Best of all is “Little Red Ranger,” a matter-of-fact gem that finds Edwards reveling in her Canadian roots in this story about a fellow Canuck heading to California to seek his fortune. Aside from a reference to Rick Danko of The Band, the longtime Pittsburgh Penguins fan snuck in the line “Live by the ocean, have a beautiful life / The Leafs still suck at playoff time.”

It’s not the first time Edwards has given a nod to the sport that is a religion in her home country. The 47-year-old composer also famously penned the must-hear jam “I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory,” inspired by the professional relationship between Wayne Gretzky and teammate/bodyguard Marty McSorley. For Edwards, falling in love with hockey gave her a way to fit in.

“It’s something I became very aware of in my late teens and early 20s when I was integrating into the local music scene,” she explained. “All the boys who played in bands who I was desperate to be part of their little social and musical groups (scene) all played pickup hockey and grew up playing pickup hockey or going to the rink. And I was a foreign service kid. We lived in other places, and I studied classical violin. That was not my childhood, and I had this incredibly nostalgic feeling for it. It’s still this very Canadian painting that I carry in my mind.”

“And of course, there are a couple of guys in my band who are what ‘Little Red Ranger’ is based on, and they are die-hard Leafs fans. They were little boys who watched the games with their dads on Saturday nights, and the Leafs have never delivered the great victory the fans so richly deserve,” she added.

In the years since, Edwards has released six full-length albums and built a touring resume that includes opening a tour by Canadian natural treasure Bryan Adams and co-headlining with storied punk rock icon John Doe. Her music has generally been considered alt-country/Americana, but Edwards said her current live shows might alter that perception.

“It’s a rock and roll show,” she pointed out. “I have a six-piece band, and I’m really excited to play some of these songs on the record. I think the thing I’m most excited about now playing live is playing with these guys. We’re a tight band, and they’re all world-class musicians. We play a bunch of songs from my back catalog. One of the things that’s weird is paring it down to a 90-minute show to be honest. It’s hard to choose (the songs).”

As for the immediate future, Edwards is embracing the touring life, which was not always an easy thing for her to do. Along the way, she’s learned how to balance the unpredictability that comes with life on the road with coming into her own as a live performer.

“I’m so lucky because the guys who play with me I love playing with,” Edwards said. “I used to find live shows and touring to be challenging sometimes. I didn’t have the experience to know how to make something out of a difficult situation sometimes. It might have been because I was tired, or the gig was crappy or the venue wasn’t very good. Now, I focus on us knowing we’re going to play a great show. Being in that head space is really fun. Live shows and playing for people are an incredibly wonderful feeling. But I know it takes a whole lot of guts to do that.”