Edwin McCain & Five For Fighting

Edwin McCain was born in Greenville, South Carolina, where he still lives. "My sister is a great singer, my dad played guitar and sax in swing bands in college, my mom plays piano. They're all good musicians. When I was young, my dad made me promise to never be a musician. He should have said never be an accountant. He sealed my fate by telling me not to do something."

 

McCain's debut, Honor Among Thieves, captured his acoustic based blend of folk, pop and soul accented by some funky electric guitar, a horn section and backing singers. It did well, but nothing could have prepared him for the frenzy that was created by his second outing, Misguided Roses. "We did it as a band in the basement of a friend's house in Nashville, living together and playing to a DAT recorder. The label wasn't checking on us, so we made a quirky record. It turned out to be a good move." The popular WB TV show "Dawson's Creek" played "I'll Be", one of the album's most romantic ballads, on an episode of the show and sent McCain's career into overdrive. Misguided Roses went Gold; the song went Top 10 and was voted one of The Greatest Love Songs Of All Time by VH1. He was also invited to sing the song on Dr. Phil's syndicated show in 2005 after Dr. Phil's audience had voted it their favorite wedding song. "You can't disagree with having a hit like that. It still gets about 2,000 spins a week. It's like having a winning lottery ticket. The benefits of a hit like that lets us keep playing the music we want to play."

 

Atlantic wanted McCain to stick to the winning formula. His next album, Messenger, featured "I Could Not Ask For More," a tune by a Dianne Warren - writer of hits for Elton John, Cher and Chicago. The song hit, but McCain wasn't satisfied with the album. "They didn't trust my writing, so they got Dianne to write me a song, and put it on the Message In A Bottle soundtrack, and while it was a success, I didn't enjoy the label dictating what we had to do as opposed to us doing what we loved to do." McCain's final major label effort, Far From Over, was an energetic, stripped down, garage band album. "It was dark and full of crazy rock'n'roll stuff, a mindless rock record. It insured that the label would drop me. I stand by the songwriting, but the music was out of hand."

 

After leaving the majors, McCain went back to his songwriter roots with The Austin Sessions, an indie project, with McCain on acoustic guitar and vocals backed only by Larry Chaney (acoustic guitar) and Craig Shields (sax.) It's an intimate album of McCain originals and carefully selected covers. For Scream and Whisper McCain signed with DRT and enlisted his full touring band. It's a collection that balances his acoustic and no frills, rock'n'roll sides. Which brings us back to Lost In America. "This is a band record. We all put our individual spin on it, and working on songs as a band really improved the quality of the music. Everybody's heart and soul went into it. Now it's time to get out there and play it live."

 

Edwin McCain has a romantic soul and a way of investing life's everyday moments with a poetry all his own. Lost In America, his seventh album, and Vanguard Records debut, is another collection from a man whose career is marked by his talent for delving into the human condition and producing songs of uncommon insight and compassion. "I live my life and I write about it," McCain said. "I take whatever happens to me between records and spend time thinking and feeling it through, then I draw on the lessons I've learned and try to find the music in it."