For decades, Kathleen Edwards has been a cornerstone of North American roots music.

Since making her debut with 2002’s Failer, she’s spent the 21st century occupying the grey area between genres, swirling together her own mix of alt-country, folk, and heartland rock & roll. It’s a sound that has earned its creator more a half-dozen Juno nominations, as well as Top 40 success on both sides of the Canadian/American border. Now in her third decade as an artist, Kathleen Edwards has done more than carry the torch of songwriting heroes like Tom Petty, Neil Young, and Lucinda Williams — she’s opened the door for others, too, inspiring a new generation of artists who, like her, blur the boundaries between genre and generation.

A native of Ottawa, Ontario, Edwards was still in her early 20s when she released the critically-acclaimed Failer. The album’s warm, woozy sound — crystallized on radio hits like “Six O’Clock News” — quickly turned her into one of the era’s alt-country heroes. From the very start, though, Edwards’ music seemed to exist somewhere out of time, resisting categorization even as Failer received a Juno nomination for “Roots & Traditional Album of the Year.”

“No one knew what to call my type of music back then,” she says of those early years. “The Americana genre didn’t exist yet, so they couldn’t categorize me. I just made the kind of music I wanted to make.”

Edwards continued blazing her own trail with follow-up albums like Back to Me and Asking for Flowers. By the time Voyageur arrived in 2012, Americana very much did exist as a genre, and Edwards found herself riding a newfound commercial peak. The album reached Number 2 on the Canadian Albums Chart and Number 3 on Billboard’s Folk Albums chart. Even so, a busy decade on the road had left her exhausted. After touring in support of Voyageur’s release, Edwards left the music business altogether and moved to suburban Ontario, where she opened a coffee shop called — defiantly — “Quitters.”

What’s next? New music, of course. Edwards remains a fan of “ripping guitar riffs and good songs,” and she’s combining both into a follow-up album that showcases her legacy as well as her evolution. She maintains a presence on the road, too, playing her own gigs one minute and sharing shows with her heroes — including Willie Nelson, John Fogerty, and Bob Dylan — the next.

“The amount of things I’ve gone through might make someone else quit…but quitting doesn’t quite do it for me,” she says. “I can’t help but want to write great songs, connect with people, and see what’s ahead. I don’t love looking behind, even though it’s one of the ways we can see what we’ve done, so I’m looking forward.”