ELIZABETH COOK
9 p.m. Stickyz. $13.
Before a few days ago, I didn’t know anything about Elizabeth Cook, but I do now and I’m here to tell you, this gal is a genu-wine country charmer and a fine singer and songwriter as well. She hails from the Sunshine State, but not from the Real Housewife-and Lamborghini-infested climes of Miami. No, she’s from Wildwood, a “total pit cow-town; it’s not like Disney World,” she told Craig Ferguson.
She got started playing music young, accompanying her parents. Her mother was a West Virginia native and a mandolin picker and guitarist and her daddy a musician and a welder by trade, one he learned while incarcerated for running moonshine. Her folks met after he’d served eight years. Cook moved to Nashville after college and wasted no time at all, releasing five albums, making hundreds of appearances on the Grand Ole Opry and hosting her own radio show, “Elizabeth Cook’s Apron Strings,” on SiriusXM’s Outlaw Country channel.
Her 2007 album “Balls” was a welcome shot of real country, sure to please everyone who prefers Dolly and Loretta over So-and-So or Whatshername or whoever’s on top in the pop-oriented world of mainstream country. Those two legendary country ladies are name-checked in Cook’s paean to working women, “Sometimes It Takes Balls to be a Woman” (which, as certain Internet pundits have conjectured, is sure to be immortalized as a drag-show standard).
Her latest long-player, 2010’s “Welder,” includes the playful “Snake in the Bed,” and “Yes to Booty,” but also takes some heart-wrenching turns with “Mama’s Funeral,” a tribute to her mother, and the lilting tale of “Heroin Addict Sister.”
Check out “Sometimes It Takes Balls to be a Woman” after the jump.