STITTSVILLE, ONT.—Somewhere, out there, past the big-box stores and strip malls of suburban Ottawa, there's a little café with a big story behind it. That's because it belongs to Kathleen Edwards, erstwhile celebrated singer-songwriter and current barista-in-chief.

Its name? Quitters. “For all the people who dared me,” says Edwards, a knowing smile on her lips.

It's a chilly mid-November afternoon, and the floor-to-ceiling windows facing out onto the downtrodden historic main street of this small-town-turned-exurb are frosted over with condensation. Inside, though, warmth all around: Small groups cluster under the glow of Edison bulbs, seated on vintage-shop furniture. Edwards is cheery and upbeat, serving top-notch espresso and home-made cookies and muffins, which she's taken to baking herself.

What she's doing here, after years of playing bigger shows to bigger crowds from one continent to the next, is the story of the café's name.

In January 2012, Edwards released Voyageur, her fourth album. It was an important building block in her rise up the musical hierarchy, building on steady successes while pushing herself toward new horizons.

Her career was healthy, but Edwards, now 36, wasn't: Voyageur overlapped a span when her world turned upside-down. Her five-year marriage had ended; then a new relationship started and then abruptly withered, all while she was writing, recording and touring her new songs. When the dust settled, for the first time in years, she was very much alone.

The album was experimental, personal, confessional, heartbroken and unresolved. Her boyfriend at the time, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, had been her co-producer on Voyageur, recording it at his home studio in Wisconsin. Touring and doing press for the album, Edwards found herself in an unexpected state of emotional shock.

“The questions would go like this,” says Edwards, a down-to-earth, effusive sort with a bright shock of strawberry-blonde curls. “‘So, you're divorced now and you just made a record with your new boyfriend about your ex-husband?'” She turns suddenly quiet. “I'd just sit there thinking, ‘How the f--k did I do this to myself? I'm such an a--hole.' I just felt vulnerable all the time.”

She and Vernon didn't last. With the tour finished and the relationship over, she found herself in a fog, and couldn't see her way out. Then, this past February, she quit. Announcing it on Facebook, she was her straightforward self: “I'm really sorry but I don't think I want to make music anymore.” There was more — that she was feeling spent, unsure, that maybe she was just in a rut — but fans were distraught, prompting her to clarify on Twitter: “Music is life,” she wrote. “But I'm stalled as f--k.”

So Quitters, which opened in September, isn't so much an ending as a beginning. Edwards needed to push reset, and out here, just a short stretch from where she grew up, she's done that much. After years of living gig to gig in tour buses and vans, Edwards walks five blocks to the café every morning to bake muffins and get ready for the day.

It wasn't a sudden escape. About a year ago, with her life tumbling down around her, she made the decision to head home. Her father's diplomatic career kept the family on the move, living as far away as Korea and Switzerland, but Ottawa always felt like where she belonged.

When she came back, “I was comfortable right away,” she says. “All the thousands of places I've been, I always felt right here.” She spent some time setting up a home, “buying a lawnmower, spending time with my family, and getting used to being a single lady in a house that's way too big for me,” she says, the mix of emotions weighing heavy on her words.

“I'm a single woman in her late 30s,” she shrugs. “I thought by now I'd be in a settled relationship, with babies, living in Wisconsin. And that didn't happen.”

But she was determined not to wallow. One day, she happened on an old, unremarkable box of a building on Stittsville's main street, with ratty blinds pulled down and moldy insulation tumbling out of the ceiling. “And I could see it. I knew it would be great,” she says. Signing a lease, she gamely hoisted a sledgehammer herself and started ripping apart the old to make way for the new.

It's not too much to apply the metaphor to her own life. Was it satisfying? “F--k, yeah,” she laughs, a physical purge of toxic emotions that had crippled her musical gifts. They had been building up, for years, maybe, without her knowing. Her first album, Failer, was recorded in her house when she was just 24. It landed her on David Letterman — the first of several appearances there, as she became a Late Show favourite — and she quickly became one of this country's brightest young musical lights. And not just here, either: On the strength of Failer, Rolling Stone magazine singled her out as one of the Top 10 young artists to watch.

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In the ensuing years, she opened for Bob Dylan, toured with Bryan Adams, was nominated for multiple Junos and Polaris prizes and rubbed shoulders with the music industry elite. Late nights and new cities were the day-to-day as she criss-crossed the world, touring constantly.

“It was exciting. I had an amazing life,” she sighs.

At the same time, things were getting harder to pin down. “There's a side of me that's very creative and ambitious. But there's another side of me that wants to feel quiet and settled.” She pauses. “I don't take care of that side enough.”

After the success of her next two records, Back to Me in 2005 and Asking for Flowers, in 2008, Edwards started, slowly, to unravel. “People who have 9-to-5 jobs usually have hobbies,” she says. “I had a 12-to-12-to-12 job, and I didn't have time to fit in real-life things.”

Leading up to Voyageur, her marriage to Toronto-based Blue Rodeo member Colin Cripps was dissolving. She wrote much of the album in a haze that she's not sure she recognized at the time.

“I had that really heavy feeling of helplessness,” she says quietly. “And I didn't see an end to it. I was really unwell.” After Voyageur was released and the press descended, she says, “I remember crying in a lot of interviews, or trying to look like I wasn't crying. I didn't really know what was happening to me.”

Edwards knew she had to do something different. She circled back home and looked around. It was different, that much was sure: Subdivisions and strip malls, commuters and anonymity. For the first time in ages, she had time to think. And what her mind settled on was building something solid, in a community of which she could be part.

“I'm an excellent barista,” she laughs. “I had to realize: Fame is not acceptance, it doesn't validate you as a person. It means nothing. You know what means something? Having people from the neighbourhood come in, getting to know them, seeing their families, and hearing them say ‘thank you for giving us a place to go.' That's . . . awesome.”

Early mornings replaced late nights, customers replaced adoring fans. She got a dog, and started baking muffins (“Vegan,” she notes. “Very healthy”). And for the moment at least, she wouldn't change a thing.

“I have people who come in and say, ‘Hey, I hear you used to be a singer,” she smiles. “I'm still a singer. But the priority is somewhere else for now. I'm working my ass off, and I'm exhausted. But I'm happy. I'm really happy. I was emotionally exhausted for years. This is different, and good.”

Good enough that another change doesn't seem as impossible as it might have six months ago. “The idea was to give this a year and see what it can be. But I have some really, really nice instruments sitting in my house, staring at me — giving me the stinkeye,” she says.

“It was really empowering to be able to walk away. This whole adventure is an incredible exercise in trying to get to know myself better, outside that person who's on stage all the time.

“But getting on stage and playing a show? There's nothing — no f--king steamed milk, nothing,” she laughs, “that competes with that feeling.

“So yeah, I can see a time, maybe, when I might go sit for a while and play some music again. Sure.”

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