An interview by Elizabeth Lenhard that appeared in the July 2001 issue of Chicago Magazine

Killer Frost

Edith Frost’s face is open as a full moon, with round gray-blue eyes and half-curly bangs exactly like the ones she had as a kid.  Don’t be fooled.  The country Midwestern crooner may say things such as "I’ve always been just my guitar and voice.  I’m lucky if I have the skills to put it on a crappy four-track cassette."  But she’s not as guileless as all that.

click for larger imageThe cerebral side emerges during a coffee klatch in her Ravenswood apartment.  The 36-year-old muses about "Easy to Love," a breathily beautiful ode on her album Wonder Wonder, out this month from Drag City.  "I wanted to do a real Cole Porter-y, slightly-jazzy-but-languid love song," she says, in a voice made raggedy by a cold and too many Marlboros.  "’Easy to Love’ was pretty much a genre study that worked."

A Texan who got her start in Brooklyn singing country swing and rockabilly, Frost up and left her husband to move to Chicago in 1996.  After a brooding breakup record, Calling Over Time (1997) and Telescopic (1998), Wonder Wonder promises to make her fans swoon.  Like Frost herself — an admitted love addict with a string of wilted boyfriends behind her — these songs stick to you and break your heart a bit.

Content to hide in domestic bliss with her current beau, guitarist John Whitney, Frost claims every album is a leap of faith.  "You think, This is it.  There is no more," she says.  "Then you pick songs, record them, and somehow, it turns into an album.  But I can never imagine it before it comes into one piece and afterwards, I can’t imagine the next one, either."

All of which makes the ethereal Edith Frost oh, so easy to love.


Photograph: McArthurPhotography.com  (Stylist: Stephanie Shoemaker; Photo Assistant: John McMullen; Hair and Makeup: Cindy Adams/Elite Chicago; Coat, Boots: 99th Floor; Shirt, Necklace, Jeans: Flashy Trash