By Brett Leigh Dicks
(This interview took place in December 2009. Kenny Edwards passed away August 18th, 2010. We will miss him greatly.)
While he is far from being a stranger around these here parts, Santa Barbara will soon be afforded the opportunity of getting to know Kenny Edwards all over again. After five years the local singer-songwriter is releasing a follow-up to his 2004 solo self-titled debut solo album. Titled Resurrection Road the album was recorded with long-time friend and producer Freddy Koella. With career that has spanned five decades and seen him not only as one of the fore-fathers of folk-rock but work with the likes of Linda Ronstadt, Don Henley, Warren Zevon, and Stevie Nicks, Edwards has never done things by half measures. Resurrection Road is no exception. It is an emotive sojourn across a collection of deeply personal songs and one not only befitting the creative vision of its composer, but beautifully reflects his heart and soul. Albums like this don’t come along very often, as Resurrection Road’s extrapolated origins lays in ironic testament to. But then again, nor do people like Kenny Edwards. On the eve of Edwards joining Carla Bonoff for a night of music at Ventura’s Zoey’s at the Loft, he enlightens us into the evolution of his new album and everything that has been poured into its genesis.
I believe you’re currently driving back from Folk Alliance where you were on a songwriting panel. You have also presented songwriting workshops at similar events. Are these experiences you enjoy?
I do actually. It’s nice to impart the experience I’ve had and maybe help to cut a few years of trial and error off other people’s experience.
And does it work both ways? Do you find yourself walking away enriched?
Sure. It’s very interesting to learn what people do and don’t know and what comes instinctively. And it’s interesting to learn what’s of interest to them. But, most of all, I enjoy the feeling of sharing. It’s kind of like performing in a way – when the environment is right, everyone walks away with something.
Sharing is something that seemingly holds great prominence in your life. Aside from workshops and panels, you play with a number of different artists, you work as a producer, and now you are touting a new album. Does at this require some unique juggling skills?
It actually happens quite organically. With the people I work with in production, we aren’t working all the time and that allows me to out on the road for a weekend as a sideman to Karla Bonoff and that will morph into doing some studio work for someone like Natalie. It just seems to unfold naturally. What I really like about working this way is that it keeps me fresh for all these different endeavors. I don’t get sick of any one of them and they all tend to inform one another.
You have a new album – Resurrection Road – and it’s been five years since your last. Are you from the Leonard Cohen school of songwriting where quality tends to trump quantity?
I don’t start a lot of songs and I definitely don’t finish them overnight. I play a lot of them live and they change over the time before I end up recording them. I’m not a fast or prolific writer. Although if I spent more time simply as a solo artist I would spend more time writing so as it wouldn’t be five years between albums!
Was the impetus for this album the fact that you had an album worth of songs that you felt were ready to be recorded?
No – had only half the songs when I started the project. My producer then went to Europe to work with another artist for a while and that slowed the process down a little. But that also allowed me to do some more writing and ended up with more songs than I needed and that gave me the luxury of picking the ones that I felt were right for the mood of this particular record. The first album was a collection of songs I had gathered over something like eight years, but this one has a cohesive feel about it.
Do you look back at that point when the production slowed down and now see that as somewhat of a blessing? Presumably, that gave you the chance to step back a little and get sense a real sense of where the recording was headed and to then further that cause …
That’s a good point because to a certain extent that’s exactly what I did. I reflected on what I had started and that gave me a very good sense of the direction we were going and what sort of songs would fit in there. Even though some of the songs were written as far apart as four years, there is a definite theme running through the record.
You have again enlisted the production skills of Freddy Koella. Enlighten me a little into what Freddy adds to the musical palette …
He’s a very interesting producer in that he puts quite a stamp on what he does. Not maybe as blatently as someone like Daniel Lanios, but he has a very distinctive style and very specific taste. So it’s always a process of us finding the songs that speak to both of us. Being a producer myself, I try and give him as freer hand as possible, but it’s always a collaboration so there’s a lot of cross-pollinization there.
Across the years you have worked with an immeasurably long list of producers and you of course have extensive production experience yourself. Is it the collaborative aspect that you are seeking for yourself from a producer?
Exactly. When I am producing I cast the project and give the musicians as free a hand as possible because you want them to be the best they are. And it’s the same thing with the producer when I’m recording my material. I don’t tell them exactly how I want the project to sound. That defeats the purpose of having them there. That being said though I do have a point that I want to get across whether that’s defending certain songs or styles that I want to play in.
And the list of artists you have worked with is equally extensive. Do you find those experiences in turn influence or inform your own work?
These days I probably take in a little less, just because I have been taking in so much for so many years! There has been this period across the last five years where I have been listening to a lot of contemporary music. Not so much to steal from it but more because I wanted to hear how things were changing – many times for the better. A lot of my contemporaries don’t appreciate what is happening now so much and feel like the era where they were working at their peak was the most valid. I’m not like that. But, in the last year, I have stopped paying as much attention to the outside world as it were.
You have worked with some of the greats from across all eras of contemporary music. Who have been some of the personalities that have made a real impression upon you as a musician?
Of course working with Linda Ronstadt for so many years was quite something. She was such an important artist. Even though she wasn’t a songwriter for the most part, she had such an inventive stylistic input especially in the Seventies when she co-invented folk-rock. She had a big influence upon me, but also visa-versa. I was a collaborator and member of her band and I also brought in a lot of stuff to her that was influencing me at the time. And Warren Zevon was another big influence upon me. He had such a unique way with lyrics. And we ended writing a song together.
