If you think Rush Limbaugh is hard to understand, try reading Czech. That is Dustin Edge’s day job.
Edge, a St. X graduate, became an English translator after emigrating to the Czech Republic. A lifelong musician whose bands include Section 8 and later Cast Iron Filter, Edge’s material for By The Numbers took shape overseas. He played weekly at the Czech Inn, a basement space that hosted music and film shows, and demoed at Skutecnost, a youth hostel. In 2008, Edge’s wife was accepted into a master’s program at New York University.
On returning to the United States, Edge kept both his job and the music going, tracking Numbers at The Loft, a gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with studio musicians, and playing solo acoustic shows around New York.
Numbers rolls out with a futuristic bent. “It’s an attempt by me to sort of reconcile and balance this notion of numerical order with the basic aspects of life from the day to day — how I respond to music and how it fits into my life,” he says. “I didn’t title anything when I was first working on it. I just had numbers. I wrote more and more words that kept referring to different mathematical things — organization vs. trying to get things done in life. It’s very important to our existence to have this balance between work and play.”
As for a hometown show, Edge is playing that by ear. By The Numbers is now available on iTunes and other digital retailers. Check out myspace.com/dustinedge.
Music ’Cast
The third annual South by South End Festival happens April 23-24 at Expo Five, featuring Thomas Medicine, Straight A’s (pictured) and more. SXSE’s Frank Lewis Jr. joins us in the studio. Listen at Bluegrass Catastrophe (bluecat.leoweekly.com).
This article appears in April 13, 2010.