No Depression interview

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.

Edith in the studio, Sept. ‘96 (photo by Dave Rucins)

When such accolades appear for a release on a record label that doesn’t fly writers around and stick fancy food in editors’ stomachs, and the artist in question is not also a runway model, there stands a chance that a bit of truth might be found in such bloated hyperbole. And I say yeah, adding further bloat for the press kit: Edith Frost is a major talent. On Calling Over Time, her new full-length disc for Drag City, she’s made the strongest, most distinctive debut in the singer-songwriter vein since Richard Buckner or Palace.

On the phone, Frost is nervous, talking fast. Tangent leads to tangent sort of leads to tangent but that’s cool, especially as we discover that we were probably in the same places (Earwax record store, WFMU parties, the Ship’s Mast) while living in Brooklyn at the turn of the ’90s. It’s while living there that Frost first really began to perform live, where she learned and honed her handiwork, chasing down America’s trad-genre classics. She reverentially covered the likes of the Carter Family (in a band called the Holler Sisters); did stripped-down, hot-headed rockabilly as the leader of Edith & Her Roadhouse Romeos; and hit Kitty, Patsy and Western swing with the Marfa Lights.

Both music fiend record collectors, we enthuse together over the likes of the Louvin Brothers and Jimmie Rodgers (and she tells me about some more obscure folks to check out next time cash is in the back pocket). Gillian Welch, Sparklehorse, Lambchop, Freakwater, and anything by Will Oldham provide contemporary inspiration, though she confides that she doesn’t go out much, even though there are a lot of shows in the current hometown, Chicago.

On the internet — www.enteract.com/~cowgal/ — Edith Frost is not tense at all, she is very self-assured and revealing. It’s a good site, too, as befits one who oversaw a site for Palace and a monument to Cowgirls, and who currently makes her living writing in html-language, working on corporate websites. The following details were gleaned from an area called "facts & figures"; the precise, self-revelatory nature of the information is much in fitting with an artist who’s bound to produce an obsessive fan or two:

"birthname: edith keator frost; nickname: eda; birthday: august 18, 1964; birthplace: san antonio, texas; occupation: singing/songwriting/web design; marital status: almost divorced; religion: church of the subgenius; favorite color: blue; favorite sport: roller skating; favorite author: philip k. dick; vices: smoking, drinking (rarely); diet: ovo-lacto vegetarian; car: none; hair: long, brown, wavy; height: 5 feet 7 inches; weight: 130-140 lbs depending; clothing size: 12/14; shoe size: 11 ladies/9 mens; iq: 149 (supposedly); tattoos: none; piercings: 1 per ear; animal scars: horse kick, monkey bite; drug allergies: penicillin."

This person is together, as well: the site provides gig information, how to order her stuff, and my favorite, a list of the 20 things she has most recently listened to, which is constantly updated by the very plugged-in Frost.

On Calling Over Time, Edith is lovingly accompanied by Chicago’s incomparable, art-damage instrumental outfit Gastr del Sol (Jim O’Rourke and David Grubbs) on everything from pedal steel (which, Edith says, Jim had just taught himself to play on the first day of the session) to keyboards; Eleventh Dream Day’s Rick Rizzo in the unusual position of bassist; and journeyman percussionist (Palace, Royal Trux) and producer Rian Murphy.

These folks are playing in a surprisingly roots-friendly, understated manner. Calling has a timeless, Tonight’s The Night, Giant Sand gig ca. 1988, Music From Big Pink, bleary-eyed sound. But it’s not about sound, so much: It’s about songs, textbook examples of a restraint and savvy that recall Joni Mitchell’s early ’70s work. Not a single song strays far from the tattered confines of the minor key. Moody and contemplative, Frost’s exquisite, achy-nay-breaky melodies blur the lines between swinging C&W, gut-wrenching folk-rock, and eerie post-psychedelia. Play it for that breakbeat-besotted pal of yours who’s all hung up on "new-ness" and the "irrelevance" of the unsampled guitar-voice-drums-bass music.

On the stereo right now is the soundtrack to my next long soak in the tub. I’ll welcome the melancholy lullaby as the words to "Too Happy" float in and out of my head, sinking into bath foam. "I’ve clung to the anchor / When they tried to be my rescue / …I don’t wanna be too happy / Just enough to tide me over / ‘Cause it won’t feel like home / Without something to hold me back / Without something to pull behind me / …Without a reason to cry."