Singer-songwriter Elizabeth Cook brought us into her living room last Friday night (April 6, 2018) at the Red Dragon Listening Room in Baton Rouge. Sitting in a chair, jacket thrown over the back, tall lamp standing next to her and a natural ability to make a room full of people her best friends in the world, Cook told stories, cracked jokes and sang songs for about 90 minutes.
Cook definitely has that connecting effect on people. With hillbilly music playing parents who had moonshine and prison in their pasts, you’d think Cook would be warbling like a Dolly Parton rhinestone cowgirl. Not this night, not this ever. Cook may have started her career out on a straight-shooting country path but over the last year she has parlayed herself into a songwriter with real grit in her lyrics and a sweet huskiness in her elocution. Life could have made her a hard woman but instead, it’s given her a self-reflecting mirror in which to write and sing. “When I was younger it was much more light and fun-loving and now it’s more a little naturally darker and insightful as you start to suffer some blows,” Cook told me during an interview a few weeks ago.
Those reflections soared like a swallow riding on the wind, as she kicked off the first night of a short southern tour, hitting Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma. Exhausted from the long drive down from Nashville, it never showed up in her singing or her rapport with the audience. She began with a fun “El Camino” from 2010’s engrossing Welder album, easing into Frankie Miller’s “Blackland Farmer” before making her way into a new song called “Stanley By God Terry,” which she revealed was “emotional and hard to sing.” But the next song, “Rock N Roll Man,” was not: “This one I can get through. It’s about my ex-husband.”
Most songwriters love to tell stories between their songs and Cook was like a bright shining shot of whiskey when it came to hers. Introducing “Yes To Booty” as a “drunk sex song,” she cocked a grin and teased, “For some of ya’ll, it’s too late tonight but there’s still tomorrow.” She hinted, not so subtly, that the unreleased song, “These Days,” was actually about “sex, drugs and rock & roll … and that just ended about two weeks ago and I’m still processing it,” she said with a laugh. And “Straight Jacket Love” was “For all the crazy ladies.”
She covered the Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes,” which David Letterman once requested her to sing when she appeared on his late-night show, Jessi Colter’s “I’m Not Lisa” with the pureness of a mountain stream, and Merle Haggard’s “That’s The Way Love Goes,” since it was the anniversary of his death in 2016. But it was her own songs that gripped you right in the veins. From “Heroin Addict Sister” to “Dyin” and the mesmerizing “These Days,” it was all about life and the aches and pains it gives you along it’s journey. “It’s always personal,” Cook said in the interview about her songwriting. “I don’t know how to write anything worth a crap that is outside of my own inner perspective.”
Her most famous song, “Sometimes It Takes Balls To Be A Woman,” was saved for the end of her regular set and received one of several standing ovations the crowd gave her during the night.
Another new song she tried out on the Red Dragon audience was “Thick Georgia Woman,” which she had wanted to play on the electric guitar but something acted up with the wires and she ended up just playing it on her trusty acoustic, which she had been playing quite well all night up to that point. Before that she had pulled out “Girlfriend Tonight” to practice on us before playing it for a longtime fan at the next night’s show.
Opening for Cook was the duo of Jodi James and Clay Parker, a hometown favorite who never fail to satisfy with engaging original songs that never detour into kitschy ruminations of love, life and everything in-between. One of their most passionate songs, “Katie’s Blues,” feels like a warm breeze off a tranquil lake. “Flatfoot” showcased their gentle guitar harmonies and “Gallows Tree” highlighted the way their voices entwine and bloom. Their new album will be released in June and should only further their rising star.
For Cook, who has called her career a “slow burn,” she appears to be continuing what she began on her last album, Exodus Of Venus, which was the rawer explorations of her inner emotional sanctum, as proved by the new songs she performed this night; most especially the way she heartbreakingly sang the line, “I hear my mother calling out my name” from “These Days” that caused a chill to run up the spine each time she whisper-sang it.
It’s always a good sign when you go to a show expecting it to be fun and it ends up being better, deeper and more personal. Cook definitely brought her A-game to the Red Dragon.
Elizabeth Cook Setlist: El Camino, Blackland Farmer, Stanley By God Terry, Rock N Roll Man, These Days, Methadone Blues, Pale Blue Eyes, Yes To Booty, Dyin, Girlfriend Tonight, Straight Jacket Love, Thick Georgia Woman, I’m Not Lisa, Sometimes It Takes Balls To Be A Woman ENCORE: Heroin Addict Sister, That’s The Way Love Goes.
Clay & Jodi Setlist: Gallows Tree, Every New Sky, Katie’s Blues, Down To The Garden, Flatfoot, Remember It All.
