VIDEO: Kathleen Edwards Stops By CBS THIS MORNING

Acclaimed singer, songwriter and musician Kathleen Edwards was featured on "CBS This Morning" this past Saturday speaking with Anthony Mason and performing three songs from her critically acclaimed new album, Total Freedom, as part of their "Saturday Sessions" series: "Options Open," "Hard On Everyone" and "Who Rescued Who."

Co-produced by Edwards, longtime collaborator and guitarist Jim Bryson and Grammy Award-winning producer and musician Ian Fitchuk, Total Freedom was released this past Friday on Dualtone (an Entertainment One Company, stream/purchase here) and marks a major return for Edwards, who took an extended step away from music in 2014.

"I had no desire to write, no desire to play," she says of what she refers to as her "working sabbatical." "It allowed me all the time and space I needed to even just enjoy listening to music again. There were so many times where, if I was thinking about my own writing or playing, my heart just wasn't in it." She continues, "I DON'T want to write songs that are going to keep me in a dark place for two years. I didn't have to carry a lot of the pressure of whatever course I was on previously...There's a pressure sometimes to keep that ball rolling, and that's what was so freeing about stopping altogether and starting again. I realized I'm entirely in control and deciding what my course of action is."

Total Freedom is Edwards' fifth-studio album since her 2003 debut and her first since 2012's Voyageur. The album reached #39 on the United States' Billboard 200 chart, #2 in Canada and received widespread critical acclaim-NPR Music praised, "Her songs feel as personal and lived-in as ever...Edwards has never seemed more confident in her own considerable gifts," while Pitchfork declared, "Each song emphasizes change and risk, and Edwards never resorts to tired sentiments or platitudes about healing and hope" and Rolling Stone proclaimed, "an exquisite, widescreen beauty." Now based in Ottawa, Ontario, Edwards is a five-time Juno Award nominee and winner of the SOCAN Songwriting Prize for Voyageur track, "A Soft Place to Land." She has also had her music featured in several hit television shows including Grey's Anatomy, One Tree Hill, Hart of Dixie, House and more.