There are two Elizabeth Cooks. There’s the one who performs on the Grand Ole Opry, as she has for more than a decade, singing the straight-up country songs that make up the canon of that venerable establishment. Then there’s the singer-songwriter Elizabeth Cook whose best known lyric is “sometimes it takes balls to be a woman” and whose new album, Welder, includes lyrics about a “heroin addict sister,” a mullet-wearing, El Camino-driving boyfriend, and a “rock and roll man” frequently driven to fisticuffs by “cigarette ashes in a Budweiser can.” The music on Welder careens well outside the bounds of Opryland, shifting from waltzes and bluegrassy numbers to alt-country, pop ballads, and flat-out rockers. Elizabeth hosts a popular morning show on XM Sirius Outlaw Country – she travels in the same circles as Justin Townes Earle, Dwight Yoakam, Ryan Bingham, and Lucinda Williams. The Iron Horse show will be a trio with Elizabeth, Tim Carroll on guitar and Bones Hillman (from Midnight Oil) on upright bass.
“My mom was a hillbilly singer from Charleston, West Virginia—she played mandolin, guitar, and was a songwriter. My daddy was just sort of a novice musician and he ended up playing upright bass in the prison band when he was in jail. So when Daddy got out of jail he met Mama and they started playing little honky-tonks around central Florida. They had me when my mother was 42 and he was 48. I came along late and was sort of born into their little honky-tonk band scenario in central Florida in the ’70s.” -Elizabeth Cook
Tickets are available at the Northampton Box Office, 76 Main Street, 413-586-8686 and online at IHEG.com.
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