The Onion interview

Edith Frost: Getting Warmer

"I’ve been saying it from day one and I’m still saying it: I just don’t want to ever have anything to do with the big corporate music scene."

Edith Frost is an unusual, low-key neo-folk artist known for stark, chilly songs that possess an honesty and directness which somehow makes their aloofness endearing.  A bare-bones, self-titled EP from 1996 introduced Frost’s unique talents, and her full-length followup, 1997′s Calling Over Time, featured such guests as Sean O’Hagan from the High Llamas, as well as an almost Nick Drake-like melancholy.  The new, country-tinged Telescopic is more musically lush and slightly more upbeat, albeit with Frost’s trademark poor-me lyrics.  Frost recently spoke to The Onion about depression, Jewel, high school, and her cat.

The Onion: What were you doing before the first record came out?

Edith Frost: I’ve been writing songs off and on since I was 19.  I lived in Texas most of my life until I moved to New York in 1990.  I started playing, fooling around doing country tunes on my guitar, just trying to sing and play at the same time.  I did that at this open mic, doing cover tunes and old-time country stuff, and then I started playing in bands.  The open mic thing evolved into a country swing band called the Marfa Lights, and I also joined a rockabilly band called the Roadhouse Romeos.  I was writing as much as I could and sending a few tapes out to record labels.  This friend was egging me on; he told me to send one to Drag City, and I did.

O: Is that how you ended up in Chicago?

EF: Yeah.  I had moved from New York, where I had just broken up with my husband — my ex-husband now — and it was just really weird for me there.  Moving to Chicago was great.  It was a fresh start.  It’s great to live there, other than the snow.

O: It’s taken you quite a while to get a cross-country tour going.

EF: Well, I didn’t have a van at first.  The first tour, I was just learning how to tour.  In order to come out this way, you have to do it right.  I kept wanting to do these tours that were only one week long, and you can’t do that.  I must have toured five or six times, getting a little bit longer each time, stretching out a little more, and I finally got a van last year.  On the first tour I did, I rented a van, and it was a disaster for my credit card.  I knew I couldn’t do that again.

O: You don’t like being away from home for very long?

EF: It was all these little things, like "Is my cat being taken care of?"  I just didn’t feel like I could go out for that long.  This is the longest tour I’ve even done — and I’m like "Ohmigod!"  I like it, but I miss my boyfriend a lot, and I miss my cat.  I miss being home, ’cause I’m pretty much a homebody.  But I love traveling.  I love looking out the window.

O: Your first records had a very sparse, empty sound, but on Telescopic you really let the country feel flourish, with lots of different instruments.

EF: I think Telescopic is more densely arranged, but I came into both projects with a bunch of songs, not really considering them country or any other genre or anything.  It’s just the way they turned out.  Calling Over Time had shades of country, some pedal-steel guitar and stuff, but Telescopic is just more so in every regard.  With Calling Over Time, we just wanted to do the songs as best we could in the time we had, and we had to get 12 songs done in just six days.  We just recorded it and did overdubs and did as much as we could.  At the time, compared to the EP, it was pretty dense — anyway, there were more instruments.  So we thought, we’d better leave it this way.  We didn’t have any more time, anyway.

O: You’re playing in mostly punk-type venues, but your music isn’t very punk at all.

EF: I used to listen, I mean, I still listen to punk.  I was a punk in high school and in my early college years, so I come from that somewhat myself.  I don’t know that if you listen to the music, you can really hear that.  I don’t think so.  But in spirit, yes.

O: Are you glad that you’re on a small indie label, and you don’t have to worry about the pressures of selling tons of records, like some of your peers?

EF: Yeah.  I see it, and I’m dismayed.  I’ve been saying it from day one and I’m still saying it: I just don’t want to ever have anything to do with the big corporate music scene.  I have a real wariness about that, because they just want to spend your money.  Whereas a label like Drag City is tight with money, and they’re really smart.  I trust them with my money.  They’re not going to do anything stupid.

O: How about the record-buying public?  Do you ever think people are stupid for buying Jewel’s records instead of yours?

EF: Oh, no.  No.  There’s got to be a mainstream.  I don’t want to be in the mainstream, I don’t want to be marketed like that, I don’t want to be a product like that.  Somebody else has to do it.  So, it’s great that somebody like Jewel can do that so I don’t have to, you know?  There’s always got to be something bad — I don’t think Jewel is bad, I don’t — but, like, lame radio, you know?  There’s a place for that, so you know what’s good.  It makes it really obvious so you can tell the difference.

O: Have people remarked that your music is sad or cold or depressing?

EF: Well, a lot of the songs are totally sad and cold and depressing!  But the thing that sometimes bugs me is that people will write about me and think that I am that way, that I’m a sad person, or that I’m depressed.  Poor Edith, you know, she got her heart broken so bad.  But it’s not really that bad. [Laughs.]  I mean, I write it and I get it over with.  When I talk to people, I’m not normally depressed.  I put it into music and let it go.  It makes me feel weird when people are feeling sorry for me because of my music.  Because it’s really not a problem for me.

Edith Frost plays the 15th St. Tavern on Feb. 10 at 10 p.m.  Lullaby For The Working Class and The Foggy Mountain Fuckers will open the show.