Musician Richard Edwards adds 2 screenplays, a book to artistic output

Platitudes are one thing. Battle-tested beliefs are something else.

When Indianapolis-based musician Richard Edwards says, “Nothing will stop me from making something,” he speaks from experience.

A decade ago, the vocalist, songwriter and guitarist for rock band Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s was diagnosed with clostridium difficile colitis, known better as C. diff, a rare and potentially fatal intestinal infection. Edwards lost 40 pounds in a matter of days.

He also lost the ability to tour with his songs, and he dissolved the band.

The debilitating illness altered the path of a bright music career. Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s issued recordings on major-label Epic Records, performed on NBC’s “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and gave the world the enduring underground hit song “Broadripple is Burning.”

But Edwards’ creative life was far from over. Despite health challenges that keep him more or less homebound, Edwards has spent the past 10 years writing and recording four solo albums, not to mention executing a do-over of the final Margot album and revisiting other songs from his past.

A fresh outburst of his art arrived this year:

◗ A 300-page hardcover book titled “A House With No Clocks—Process Book (2014​-​2024)” collects handwritten lyrics, photos, notes and guest essays related to Edwards’ post-Margot work. Bloomington-based author and fan Matt Metzler assembled the book that was published in April.

◗ Edwards is publicly sharing two screenplays he wrote. One, titled “The Age Of Wildness And Permission,” was included in “A House with No Clocks.” A future book compiles “The Age of Wildness and Permission” with a second screenplay, “Cecil and Adina.” Edwards also recorded and released musical scores to accompany the stories, which have yet to be produced as filmed entertainment.

◗ On Nov. 3, Edwards’ 41st birthday, he will issue an album of cover songs, featuring his interpretation of tunes popularized by artists such as Miley Cyrus and Randy Newman.

The album’s first single is a stripped-down cover of Chappell Roan’s current hit “Good Luck, Babe!”—a contender for the unofficial title of “Song of the Summer” featuring the lyric, “You’d have to stop the world just to stop the feeling.”

Although rising star Roan is singing about romantic attraction, the “stop the world” line also serves as a companion to Edwards’ statement about artistry: “Nothing will stop me from making something.”

Ronnie Kwasman, a former member of the Margot band who played guitar on two of Edwards’ solo albums, said his friend is driven by a “restless and creative hunger.”

Part of Edwards’ productivity is a drive to “beat the clock” in case his health worsens. Meanwhile, he needs to pay bills and has an active fan base eager to purchase his work.

“I’ve made seven records since I’ve been shut in the house with this gut thing,” Edwards said. “If I didn’t have two hands tied behind my back, maybe I’d be lazier.”

Gallows humor is present in Profound Discomfort, the name of his do-it-yourself record company that ships vinyl records to customers far and wide.

Edwards expresses frustration with being unable to play live (a crucial revenue stream in the Spotify era), but he also finds solace in consuming and making art. Confined to a jail of sorts, he said he would rather focus on reading books and watching films than wallow in self-pity.

“My physical thing is gnarly,” he said. “In a perfect world, I would just be a student for the rest of my life. I kind of am, I guess. My ideal is just reading.”

The music business

When asked how he stitches together a livelihood, Edwards replied, “It’s 1,000 different ways.”

Money was tight, for instance, when he made his debut solo album, 2017’s critically acclaimed “Lemon Cotton Candy Sunset.” After recording part of the album in Los Angeles, Edwards returned to the Midwest for surgery to address the C. diff ailment. MusiCares, a charity for musicians in need of medical attention, helped to cover those costs.

Another development on that trip: Edwards and his wife divorced. Their daughter will celebrate her 15th birthday in November.

To scrape together funds during the making of “Lemon Cotton Candy Sunset,” Edwards wrote lyrics of his songs by hand and sold about $5,000 worth to fans.

“It wasn’t because I wanted a new TV or a car,” he said. “I wanted to give that money to [producer Rob Schnapf] to make those new songs.”

Today, steady income is generated by “monthly music club” subscribers at Edwards’ profile on Patreon, a website that connects creators with fans willing to subscribe to gain access to products and special content.

“The people who get into what I do really get into it,” he said.

Metzler, who collaborated with Edwards on the “House with No Clocks” book, referred to fans as the MVPs of Edwards’ ongoing body of work.

“They are endlessly generous die-hards,” Metzler said. “They understand how small this operation is—that it’s mostly just Richard doing all of it, despite how clearly his music merits a classy record label and the machinery behind one—and how it’s their own dollars and cents that encourage and allow him to do what he does.

“Look at any one of his recent vinyl releases, and you’ll see somewhere in the liner notes a thank-you list full of names from Richard’s Patreon community,” he said. “It’s never a short list, and every one of those people have put their own money directly into Richard’s hands again and again, year after year, project after project.”

Edwards called the Patreon community a “beautiful group of people.” At the same time, he said, it’s not a best-case career scenario to rely on a “bunch of people’s paychecks.”

He also pointed out that subscribers receive significant value for their participation.

“It wasn’t meant to be a tip jar,” Edwards said of his Patreon account. “It was to be an active, organic, creative thing. That said, I’d love to have a couple years where I just make the records and hand it to somebody else and then get out of the way.”

Screen tests

“Riverdale,” a teen drama that aired on the CW network from 2017 to 2023, provided an unexpected windfall for Edwards. The show paid $20,000 for one of his songs, he said, which became a tune titled “Dance Dance Dance” sung on the show by lead actor KJ Apa.

Back in the Margot days, TV shows “Bones” and “One Tree Hill” licensed songs by the band.

“Those were really good for a while, but all that stuff for everybody seems to have dried up,” Edwards said. “They learned the big lesson: Bands will pay us to be in our shows. Why are we paying them? Everybody figured that out at the same time.”

Edwards, who studied film at Indiana University, said he wrote his first screenplay around the age of 7.

The promotional text for one of his latest screenplays—“The Age of Wildness and Permission”—describes the plot this way: “In 1956 New York, Anne Astrom falls in love with a French radical against the backdrop of a bombing spree.”

Another new work—“Cecil and Adina”—is described as: “Set in 1931. In the wake of a family tragedy, young Adina May falls in with a charismatic 13-year-old preacher.”

Guitarist Kwasman, who works as a filmmaker at Chicago’s Invisible Landscapes Productions, said Edwards is prepared to branch out to screenwriting.

Edwards has a “vast knowledge of so many different directors and different genres—and not just knowledge, but he has watched and rewatched the classics, the obscure and the unknown,” Kwasman said. “He would always be telling me about obscure documentaries or suggesting pre-code noir films. Through him, I have found a lot of my favorite films.”

Edwards said it’s too early to talk about possible production of his scripts.

“I weirdly care about both of them, kind of as much as my music,” he said. “In the past few years, I’ve learned that it’s OK for other things to be my art sometimes. I didn’t feel that way growing up. I had an identity thing where I had to give everything to that one thing or else I would be cheating it. Maybe I’ve made enough stuff where it doesn’t matter as much anymore.”

Kwasman said screenwriting is a “logical next step” for Edwards.

“Songwriting is storytelling, imagery, memories and emotions,” Kwasman said. “He’s always had a way with character development. Look at some of the great Margot songs: all really detailed and nuanced stories and character studies.”

Taking cover

Edwards characterizes his upcoming covers album, titled “The King of the Spook Workers,” as a “lower stakes” project compared with an album of his own material.

“I’m not passionate about songwriting right now,” he said. “It’s the first time in my entire life.”

The album’s “Spook Workers” title refers to an old-timey nickname for unscrupulous clairvoyants and mediums.

Edwards has genuine affection, however, for the vintage gospel and country songs that mix with the “ultra modern female pop” songs he selected to cover. He recorded the album remotely with collaborators Dave Palmer on keyboards, Jay Bellerose on drums and Perla Batalla (a former backing singer for Leonard Cohen) on additional vocals.

With luck, Edwards said, the album will spark inspiration for a new batch of original songs.

One thing he’s up against is his belief that 2020 album “The Soft Ache and the Moon” represents the pinnacle of what he can achieve in music.

“‘Soft Ache’ was the most intense writing and revision and working process,” Edwards said. “If I ever tried to do something like that again—more talented people than me probably could—I would have to devote the rest of my life to it. I wrote each of those songs over the course of months. I tweaked every single line of melody on that record.”

Through his Profound Discomfort label, Edwards has issued a look back to the earliest Margot days, with demo recordings for 2005 debut album “The Dust of Retreat” as well as a triple-album collection of previously unreleased songs from his solo era.

Metzler said he anticipates no slowdown in Edwards’ output.

“He has created such a broad body of work over the past 20-plus years that he can leapfrog from writing and recording new music to scoring screenplays that he’s written to reimagining and re-recording Margot songs,” Metzler said.

Kwasman said he admires Edwards for blazing a singular trail.

“His non-stop re-evaluation of his past and present songbook might not be exactly what our old fan base is looking for, but that is not going to stop Richard,” Kwasman said. “It’s a slow burn, always has been. Those old Margot albums are meant to be reinterpreted just like any great film, play or album. They take on a life of their own, and only the author can truly reinterpret it.”•

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Editor’s note: Reporter Dave Lindquist contributed a guest essay to the book “A House With No Clocks,” compiled by Richard Edwards with Matt Metzler.