edith frost: shivers down your spine
Born of some holy communion between singer-songwriter psychedelia and spooky country blues, Edith Frost’s songs stir up serious longings. And Bob Pomeroy responds

On "Calling Over Time," the title track of her first album, Edith Frost sings a kind of epilogue to the chorus that repeats the phrase "loving hands turn burning sand to water." The notes she sings tumble down a minor scale on a prolonged fall from the upper reaches of the thin, narcotic atmosphere that the song, as a whole, generates. (In fact, the entire record, except for one or two more wide-awake numbers, flows like a dream.)

Edith Frost: Authentic, heartsick, personal & poignant

From a cool and steel gray channel encompassing the horizon, a glimmer of hope emerges. Beauty and optimism slowly wrap around your being as you witness flower petals effortlessly dancing upon the water’s surface with candles calmly floating on leaves set adrift under the dwindling light. Edith Frost is the voice from which the glimmer, the beauty and the optimism spring forth in introspective gentleness.

An Early Frost

Edith Frost approaches roots music in a conscious, educated way. Though such an approach can sometimes lead to stagy, patronizing disasters, Frost resembles fellow country/folk troubadour Gillian Welch in coming at her late-found love with an affection so open and humble that it precludes condescension. And even though Frost’s self-released EP of last year¹ and her full-length album Calling Over Time were released on Chicago’s ultra-hip indie label Drag City, she seems embarrassed by the notion of being part of some "hip" scene. She’s just a 33-year old working gal in Chicago, thrilled to get her first $3000 royalty check from Drag City and trying to figure out how to buy a vehicle so she can go on the road more. "Last May was the first time I played in a town I didn’t live in," she explains.

EDITH FROST interview
a look at edith and her pilgrimage to her label’s hometown - chicago from new york

It’s easy for some music artists to do sterile generic promo pieces and interviews to help their adoring public see the person behind the music. So Mary Hart (or Leeza Gibbons, or…) is summoned poolside to have "an intimate chat" with the artist, where we discover that, outside of the recording studio, they’re just normal people. Probing questions reveal what club they were in during high school, whether they prefer cats or dogs, or hell, even what their favorite ice cream flavor is. While this may work for a Toni Braxton or a Jon Secada, Edith Frost is slightly different proposition.

The beginning for Edith Frost really wasn’t very different than most other bands.

"I sent Drag City a tape with these four songs and I’d written a letter saying, ‘Hi, I’m Edith, I live in New York and I really love the Palace Brothers and my friend Chuck says… you know.  I said my claim to obscurity is being a country singer, but I do these little songs and you might like it," Frost told me as we ate dinner at a sparsely populated Mexican restaurant in Chicago.

edith frost: beauty’s barest elements

"He no longer loves me / I’m supposed to forget about him / I was just a harbor / A temporary love on loan…" sings Edith Frost on her new, debut full-length Calling Over Time (Drag City), a masterpiece of gently whispered beauty, a lullaby woven within gorgeous, minimal instrumentation. And while the music sways in and out of candle light, the themes of her songs revolve around the tension of love and love lost — sad, slow, and compelling. As her voice drifts about lazily, Edith Frost realizes that she is, like many of us, caught in the middle, diving in and out of other people’s worlds while maintaining her individuality, caught in the ebb and flow of intimate emotion. She is, in every sense of the word, an angel.

Country ‘N’ Midwestern: Rodeo sweetheart Edith Frost

Before country-folk singer Edith Frost summoned the courage to sing her own songs, she played in several country outfits, often at the same time. There was a country-rock-and-rockabilly band called Edith and Her Roadhouse Romeos. There was the Holler Sisters, who played covers of obscure 30’s country acts like the Coon Creek Girls, and a country swing band called, for reasons too complicated to explain, the Marfa Lights. The 31-year-old Frost, who is shy and pretty, with hair so long she can sit on it, would wear fringed outfits and cowboy boots and dance around onstage like a rodeo sweetheart. It took a long time before she felt confident enough to make demos of her own music (in her living room), and even longer to give them to friends. "I liked them," Frost says of her early songs. "But I never thought anyone else would care."

CHICAGO, IL
Edith Frost: "Loving Hands Turn Burning Sand To Water"

On the critics’ tip, Edith Frost must be doing something interesting. Following the release of a four-song 7-inch debut on Drag City last year, she has been thoroughly compared to a host of intuitive, melancholic, visionary recording artists from Skip Spence and Syd Barrett — hippie casualties whose looped music frequently flirted with brilliance — to totally smart, trippy chanteuses Kendra Smith and Lida Husik, even to those lords of crisp, crystallized depression and immaculate songcraft, Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake.

Zoom: Edith Frost

If singer-songwriter Edith Frost sounds like a sweetheart of the rodeo on her new album, Calling Over Time (Drag City), it’s not because she’s ever tamed a buckin’ bronco.  Simply put, the 32-year-old balladeer is just a fanatic about cowgirls. She was surrounded by rodeos and ranch hands growing up in Texas, but it wasn’t until after moving to Brooklyn in 1990 that she connected with the cowgal culture.

Flag Waving

Singer/songwriter Edith Frost is a giddily disarming new arrival in Chicago whose debut album on Drag City, Calling Over Time, is a notable entry from the city’s fertile musical scene.

God’s own singer of songs is coming home

As a slew of new country-based artists infiltrates the marketplace, it is becoming harder to separate the contenders from the pretenders. Make no mistake about it: Edith Frost is a contender. The former Texas resident and recent Chicago transplant makes music that is too fragile and heartbreakingly beautiful to be ignored. An amazing synthesis of styles, Frost’s music accomplishes the rare feat of sounding familiar and strikingly original at the same time.

Edith Frost is a singer/songwriter extraordinaire and a real down-home gal. She recently migrated from the Big Apple to the City of Big Shoulders, but she still calls Austin her home town. Frost’s self-titled debut EP was released last year and her first full-length album is due out this spring. She also has a web site all about cowgirls.

An email interview with Edith Frost

Perhaps you have not heard of her. In fact, I’d put money on it. But you will. Edith is a smart and sassy cowgirl who has a double seven coming out on Drag City. It’s her demos that she sent them and the guys at Drag didn’t want to change a thing. And soon it will be in a record store near you.