Cleveland Free Times interview

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.

Frost was raised in Texas but she wasn’t exactly a shit-kicking farm girl. She says, "I got exposed to a lot of kinds of music; country was about the only kind of music I didn’t hear." Her father was a jazz buff, her mother was into ’60s folk and pop, as well as classical music. "My mom is really cool, I have the greatest mom. Actually, I have the greatest dad too. But my mom has this amazing house in Austin, an old Victorian house that she’s fixed up with all kinds of stuff in it. She’s got an old Victrola and 78s and an old cylinder player."

It wasn’t until she went to college at the University of Texas in Austin that Frost started seeking out country music and specifically the works of women artists. "A friend of mine had a record by Janis Martin, this female rockabilly singer, and I taped it. I said, I should try to find female country stuff. I bet I would like it."

Eventually she ended up in New York where she spent six years, got married and unmarried, and started writing songs and performing with bands doing various permutations of country music, including rockabilly and western swing. Following her divorce,² she felt the need to distance herself from her old life. She moved to Chicago in late 1996.

That move was partially dictated by her decision earlier that hear to accept a recording offer from Drag City. Frost had sent her tape to five labels, based mostly on her admiration for certain artists on the labels. She sent one to now-defunct Austin roots music label DejaDisc, "because my friend Jo Carol Pierce had a record on the label." She sent another to Matador because she was a fan of Liz Phair and Bettie Serveert. She sent tapes to Sub Pop and Smells Like (owned by Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley). And she sent one to Drag City, because they had the Palace Brothers, the artful country posers whose stark backwoods scenarios appealed to many indie rock fans. Frost’s passion for Palace’s music was so intense that she developed a Web site for them.

In fact, Frost, who now works as a Web site designer, had previously put together a Web site devoted to cowgirls that she says garnered more e-mail than anything else she’s done. But when her own musical career heated up, she found she was devoting more time to her own site and neglecting the others, so she took them down. (She bequeathed her cowgirl information to a woman in Colorado with a similar site.)

Although Drag City has its reputation for self-consciously arty rock bands, and though they enlisted such paragons of post-rock hipness as Gastr del Sol’s David Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke to play on Calling Over Time, Frost’s own fresh-faced sincerity sets the album’s tone. She lacks the practiced deadpan irony that Palace wears like a costume, opting for a plain-spoken delivery that could’ve come from Loretta Lynn. She doesn’t load her lyrics with ill-fitting ruralisms and fictional situations; she’s more like Alanis Morissette without the bomast and slick pop production, agonizing over bad love and her own (and life’s) shortcomings, and hoping cautiously for better love and better times ahead. She’s a mixture of awkward wisdom and residual girlishness. Her gentle soprano can be sing-song on "Denied," resigned on "Wash of Water," obliquely edgy on "Temporary Loan" and almost flirty on "Albany Blues."

Though Frost has performed with a five-piece band, for economy’s sake she’ll be touring only with bassist Ryan Hembrey when she performs at the Euclid Tavern this Saturday with the Grifters. "It’s really stark, but I like it. I’ve performed solo but I think people get bored just hearing me and my guitar."