Kathleen Edwards made a rare small-club appearance in Toronto on Aug. 3 at the Dakota Tavern. Edwards, who is working on a follow-up to 2008’s Asking For Flowers, spent a good portion of the night at the club’s upright piano (with frequent forays to guitar at center stage), backed by singers Caroline Brooks and Sue Passmore (of Toronto’s Good Lovelies) and steel guitarist Aaron Goldstein (lately of Lee Harvey Osmond).
The night’s biggest surprise was an unadvertised appearance onstage by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, who joined Edwards on her songs “Mercury” and “Lazy Eye.” See a clip of them performing “Mercury” here. Edwards also played a new song, “Pink Champagne,” and took a crack at My Morning Jacket’s “Knot Comes Loose,” Neil Young’s “From Hank To Hendrix” and as shown in the video below, America’s “Sister Golden Hair.” For an encore, she took a run at 70s Canadian rockers Chilliwack’s road anthem “Fly At Night” before laughing it off and offering up instead “Away” and “Lone Wolf.”
Edwards’ next scheduled live dates are a mid-September jaunt with Fred Eaglesmith on Roots On The Rails musical train trip leaving Halifax, Nova Scotia on Sept. 13.
