Her dad played upright bass in a prison band, and her mom also wrote and played music but worked full time in a thermometer factory in Florida. When the two — who each had five children — became neighbors, it wasn’t long before they formed a bar band, fell in love and married. As Elizabeth Cook, the singer/songwriter who has captivated fans with her sound and her radio persona, looked back on her parents and her beginnings, she admitted they are “kind of unusual.” But nothing in her life has truly been straightforward.
| IF YOU GO |
| Elizabeth Cook and Jim Lauderdale |
| » Where: The Birchmrere, 370 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria |
| » When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday |
| » Info: $20; birchmere.com |
“I did the major label thing and it wasn’t working at that point,” said Cook, who opted out of a recording contract with Warner Brothers. “I had a strong sense that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I had to shed that skin. I made the decision to go back to making indie records so I could figure out what I was doing.”
Although Cook was something of a child prodigy — singing at shows and recording singles from the time she was about 4 until she was about 12 — she balked at the music industry early on. She credits her parents with understanding why their young daughter preferred to be with her friends on weekends rather than perform.
She kept music on the back burner through high school and college, too, graduating and taking a job with the Nashville office of a Big 8 accounting firm.
“I was great at school and I test really well,” she said, “but I completely sucked as an accountant. I lost the job in about 18 months.”
Credit her parent’s early influences or the intoxicating musical styles in Nashville, but Elizabeth soon turned back to her early roots.
Listening to Cook talk about her music after she landed a job as a songwriter on Nashville’s famed Music Row is something like watching a child unwrap a present. She tells of how her job as a songwriter led her to study the tunes of great writers such as Lucinda Williams and Rodney Crowell. Suddenly, the excitement of creating music opened to her as it hadn’t before.
Fast forward to today where Cook is enjoying the niche she carved in the music industry, arguably built mainly on her 2007 album “Balls” and her latest album “Welder,” named after her dad’s profession. She also hosts the daily radio show “Apron Strings” on the Outlaw Radio channel on XM, and has fielded a host of creative offers.
“I am at a great place. I’m really, really, really lucky right now,” she said. “I have music on my terms and I’m much more free to create the music I want.”
