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"They have great PlayStations!" he jokes, before adding seriously, "Sony? It's pretty hard to ignore Sony. They're a great company and they've done really well with their artists and I'd really like to be a part of that machine."
While Sony's co-head of A&R, Mike Roth, admits he was interested in signing Edwin as soon as he heard the singer had left IME to pursue a solo career, he adds, "I more interested in him finding a direction. I thought he was great with I Mother Earth, but he was going to be starting from scratch."
Although there were other Canadian labels interested in signing the guy whose voice and face helped propel IME to platinum status in Canada, manager Bob Luhtala liked the fact that Sony wasn't just interested in Edwin for name value.
"They won Ed over because they started helping him immediately without even a commitment," explains Luhtala. "They started hooking him up with writers and helping him a lot. So the attaction was that Ed thought these guys were doing a great job with him, and he highly believed in the company and signed with them."
Edwin had always been a non-writing member of I Mother Earth, a figurehead if you will, who wasn't able to grow within the band. Upon leaving IME last summer, he started honing his songwriting skills, both on his own, and with collaborators like Sony Music Publishing's Dave Martin, Los Angeles-based Keith Forsey (Billy Idol), Tara MacLean's guitarist and husband Bill Bell, Glueleg singer Ruben Huizenga, Random Media artist Biron Wong and ex-Bass is Base vocalist Chin Injeti.
"The first song that got me excited was called 'Give It'," recalls Roth. "It reminded me of Beck -- really adventurous, really cool, really minimalistic. It really put him in a convincing light. When his record comes out, I think people are going to be blown away. It's definitely a natural jumping off point from where he ended up with I Mother Earth. There might be things that are as heavy and there might be things that will be more minimalistic."
Edwin simply describes his solo material as "a collection of cool songs." He will make one last trip to LA in September to do some more writing, by which time a producer should be nailed down. "The album should be done by Christmas, January at the latest," Edwin says. Sony is looking to release it in March.