Elizabeth Cook * Tim Carroll

Raised in rural Florida, the youngest child of 11 half-brothers and sisters, Elizabeth Cook picked up music through her parents, who met while playing local country bars. These days, she's a relentless performer who's toured worldwide and held over 200 performances at The Grand Ole Opry. With her latest album, Welder, she displays an uncompromising image of herself, unafraid to be who she is. She explains that, though she’s not a welder in the traditional sense, she says she has a tendency, in the metaphorical sense, "to fuse things, confuse things, sometimes with sparks, sometimes like a lava melt". With this album, she explains that the rawness and intensity of how she feels on her latest record, as she sings about her mother's funeral and both romantic and familial love, is akin to that crackling heat of her father's welding when he was a child, as she'd been instructed not to look lest she burn her eyes.

Welder, which was produced by Don Was (Rolling Stones, Kris Kristofferson) and features appearances by Dwight Yoakam, Rodney Crowell, and Buddy Miller, has earned Elizabeth Cook three Americana Music Awards nominations, including Album of the Year and Artist of the Year. The release also earned a spot at #23 on Rolling Stone's top records of 2010, also placing her song "El Camino" at #49 in the Song of the Year category. Nashville Scene named her Best Country Singer-Songwriter for 2010 for the expansive tales she tells throughout the record. Over the years, she's done touring stints with such names as Todd Snider, Dwight Yoakam, Jamey Johnson, and Nanci Griffith. Cook is also known for hosting a popular morning show on Sirius XM's Outlaw Country channel called "Apron Strings."