Judith Edelman
Clear Glass Jar
August 18, 2009
After a hiatus of nine years, Judith Edelman returns with her latest album, Clear Glass Jar, on the 31 Tigers label. The title is apt; Clear Glass Jar is easily Edelman’s most intimate artistic statement to date, offering a transparent view into the personal and professional challenges she faced since the release of her last album, 2000’s critically acclaimed Drama Queen. A divorce, a decision to leave the road after nearly a decade of struggling with stage fright, and an evolution in her songwriting were the seeds of her new album.
A New York City native, Judith Edelman grew up playing classical piano and picked up the guitar at 26. Her father, a scientist and classical violinist, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1972. Although interested in science—an interest reflected in her work on scores for science documentaries—Judith chose music after working for several years in Third World development both in the States and in Africa.
She started touring with the Colorado-based bluegrass band, Ryestraw, in 1992, hitting festivals from Oregon to West Virginia. During this time, Judith discovered her passion for songwriting and eventually left Ryestraw to form her own band—a group which would express the eclectic musical influences in her writing. A tight, virtuosic quartet, The Judith Edelman Band played concert halls, festivals and clubs across the country and the U.K.—from the Bottom Line in New York to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival to the Lemon Tree in Aberdeen, Scotland.
Judith put out three albums on Compass Records—Perfect World, Only Sun (which made Billboard editor, Tim White’s top 10 list for 1998), and Drama Queen. A couple of years after Drama Queen came out, a shift started happening for her. The dissolution of her marriage and her band caused her to reevaluate the way in which she approached her music. She picked up the piano again and began writing songs which were more personal and explored new terrain for her, both emotionally and musically. She went back out on the road briefly with the phenomenal electric band who recorded the album with her—guitarist Gawain Mathews (who co-produced Clear Glass Jar with Edelman), bassist Dan Feiszli and drummer Eric Gardner. Those were the last shows she has played in seven years.
Five years in the making, Clear Glass Jar speaks to an artist both rediscovering her roots and maturing into her voice. What it shares with her earlier albums are sharp and literate songwriting, a melodic spirit and a dark sensibility. Clear Glass Jar, though, goes deeper, exploring charged emotional scenes and musical settings which express the full range of her songwriting. Whether it’s the sad tenderness of “Firefly” (‘You are a clear glass jar, a firefly inside/You might shine against the glass, but you will never fly’), the sexy intensity of “Magnetic” (which Judith wrote for a PBS Nova documentary about the magnetic field around Earth), the appeal for acceptance and reconciliation in “Meet Me There” (the bittersweet collision of divorce and a Rumi poem), or the world weariness of the final track, “Tired Of This Town”, Clear Glass Jar opens dark doors and walks unflinchingly through to the passionate and poignant rooms beyond.
But the story of Judith’s writing doesn’t end there. As much as she has always loved writing music (in her songs and in her work with Dox Productions writing scores for documentaries for PBS and Channel 4 London), words alone have also fascinated her. For several years, she wrote reviews for Acoustic Guitar Magazine and for puremusic.com, as well as essays, one of which, “I Hate Music”, was published in puremusic. In January 2009, she started working towards her MFA in Creative Writing at Bennington College in Vermont, and her six-word memoir was published in SmithMag’s book, “Six-Word Memoirs On Love” (Judith’s submission: “He impregnated her instead. Bullet dodged.”).
Edelman also contributed “No One To Love” to 2004’s Grammy-winning Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster and collaborated with Neilson Hubbard on “Sleep, My Child” for 2007’s collection, Song Of America. Her song “Harlan” was recorded by Kathy Mattea in 2008.
This crooked path, stretching from New York to California, through Africa, to the Rockies and now Nashville and Vermont, winds through Judith’s music as well. From classical to bluegrass to Americana to triple A folk/pop and back again, Judith’s many journeys and sojourns continue to spark her writing, showing up in strange landscapes or in a classical motif or a Tom Waits-ian word choice, maybe a haunting melody or a character dark enough for Richard Thompson. The path continues to twist on ahead and her writing—in all its forms—follows.
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