An interview I did with Steve Wildsmith that appeared in the Daily Times in Maryville, Tennessee.  It was to promote our show at the Pilot Light in Knoxville.

Edith Frost’s distinctive sound a backdrop for love

By Steve Wildsmith
of The Daily Times Staff

There’s a distinct connection between singer-songwriter Edith Frost and her subject matter — most of it having to do with love — but that doesn’t mean the two are inextricably intertwined.

In fact, Frost told The Daily Times this week, it’s sometimes perplexing that critics and fans alike mistake her music for some sort of intensely personal diary entries.

“By the time the song is written, I’ve kind of divorced myself of the emotional attachment of whatever inspired it,” Frost said. “It’s not quite as personal as it could be, and if there are any details that would bug me, I would have already edited them out to make it more universal and less personal.

“I tend to write more about feelings instead of situations that can be narrowed down to any one person, and in the end, it’s just a collection of songs. It’s not supposed to be my journal. I feel like the girl on my records is partly me, but it’s not supposed to be a picture of me, exactly. It that was me, then I would be slitting my wrists right now.”

That’s because the music Frost makes is so full of emotion and angst that it seems to be more trial and tribulation than one woman should bear. With four albums to her credit, she’s something of a darling on the indie-club circuit, endearing herself to a die-hard legion of fans who hang on her every word and follow her whimsical writings on her Web site religiously.

And then there’s the sound of her albums. Her voice flows through the speaker sounding so antiquated, so from another time and place, that you almost expect to hear the hiss and crackle of a needle waltzing across vinyl.

It’s not there, because Frost is a contemporary singer-songwriter — but her sound hearkens back to a time when a girl and a guitar could record songs of longing and heartbreak and they’d find a home on late-night A.M. radio stations broadcasting into America’s heartland.

With producer and drummer Rian Murphy, Frost assembles her song into an arrangement that sets a distinctively languid, occasionally melancholy and always dreamy mood. That’s not always the intention, but it’s certainly the end result for “It’s a Game,” her fourth and most-recent album for Drag City Records.

“I usually have a big batch of songs, and when we’re sequencing it, Rian tends to think about the story, while I think more mathematically,” she said. “I think that I don’t want to have two songs in the same key butting up against each other, or two acoustic songs right next to each other, or two downer songs next to each other.”

The story each record tells is surprising to Frost herself sometimes.

“People are calling this the breakup record, but I sure didn’t set out to do that,” she said. “I don’t think it’s any more of a ‘break-up’ album than any other record of mine. I don’t plan these things.

“But I like that it leaves itself open to interpretation by people. It’s not as cut and dry, which is a good thing. I like that it’s open-ended, so people can hear what they want to hear. I want people to be able to relate to it.”

It’s Wednesday afternoon, and Frost has just finished breakfast. She played a club in New York the night before and as a former resident of the Big Apple, she was inundated with toasts and shout-outs from old friends and peers.

“Every time I play here, it’s a parade of all these people that I love,” she said. “I always get really emotional afterward, because I have no time to hang out with them. It’s always crazy, and last night they were rushing us to load out and make room for the next performer, so I had to hug everybody I knew and get out of there as fast as I could.”

So she sat up, talking to an old friend on whose couch she crashed, and rose late. She planned to hit the road again that afternoon, and in the spring, she’ll head to Europe for a few dates as well. After that, it’s back home and, hopefully, back to work on the next record.

“I always write in snippets and they end up as songs, but I haven’t gotten anything finished yet,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I’m touring so heavily, to get it over with, because with the other records I’ve done, I tour in spurts and it takes forever to get to work on the next record. Hopefully, I’ll be done touring by June and can start cranking on some new songs this summer.”

IF YOU GO
Edith Frost with The Zincs and May Gray
WHEN: 10:30 p.m. Sunday
WHERE: The Pilot Light, 106 E. Jackson Ave., Knoxville’s Old City
HOW MUCH: $7
CALL: 524-8188
ON THE WEB: edithfrost.com