F is my favorite letter as you know... (Kathleen Edwards w/ Luke Doucet and the White Falcon @ Metro 4/5)

Night two of female country/rock singer-songwriter weekend was everything I'd hoped for. I hadn't seen Kathleen Edwards live since she played a free show at Schubas to support her first album in 2003. Since then I wore out her first two albums and was well on my way to doing the same with the third. Her repertoire is a good split of sad songs and f-you rock songs (and she dropped quite a few of those f-bombs at the metro Saturday night too.)

She plays the crowd well, her banter isn't completely flawless. She babbled about Wilco, the Cubs, and how much she likes Chicago. She was genuinely happy with the nearly full house and kept telling us. She rocked on older favorites like "Six O'Clock News," and "In State" as well as the new, fun tunes "The Cheapest Key" and, finally, after hearing drunken fans yelling "Marty McSorley!!!" 10 or 12 times, "I Make the Dough..."

And drunken fans there were a plenty. Groups of men in their 30s-50s seem to love this woman more than anyones else, and are not shy about it. She must have psycho-stalker fans at every show. Her husband is in the band, and after on particularly bold solo, she told one of her suitors in the front row "That's guitar for 'stay the fuck away from me.'"

As she says in "The Cheapest Key," she does have a softer side. And it's not just for love songs. Once she got the band to leave the show, and the crowd to stop yelling out random song titles (I swear I heard a "Free Bird" in there. Don't people know that's just not funny anymore?) she was able to play the quiet, "Alicia Ross" and "Scared at Night" from her new album "Asking for Flowers." The former is a haunting first-person re-visioning of the murder of a young Canadian in 2005, and the latter combines her own memories with her fathers' exploring family bonds and life and death - and her voice did this beautifully. I was very happy with this show.

Fellow Canadian Luke Doucet opened. I liked a couple of his songs, and though his Band, The White Falcon was really impressive. I also found myself thinking though, that some of his work falls into my category guitar rock for men. And he had his band of drunken hockey fan followers who had trailed him down from Minneapolis to prove it. But, the were fun to watch, and I would definitely go see them again.