A Conversation with Elizabeth Cook (continued)

PM: Although you and Tim don't write together in that classic or that usual Nashville sense, you guys play a lot together, right?

EC: Yeah, yeah. He plays with me, but when he does his thing, it's his thing.

PM: Right.

EC: But he's my right arm.

PM: Where do you do your thing?

EC: I've got to play tomorrow night without him--and I certainly can, it's just gotten very comfortable having him there. I don't have to watch what's going on behind me with the band so much. I know--

PM: He's the bandleader.

EC: Yes. I know if there's a diamond coming that his headstock is going to drop, and that the drummer is going to stop. [A diamond is a chord change that is sounded once and held for a measure, usually four beats. His headstock is the top of his electric guitar, where the name is.]

PM: Oh, yeah. [laughs] So where will you play tomorrow, and who will take his place?

EC: I have no idea. Well, I'm going to play at the Midnight Jamboree as Jett Williams' special guest, as further evidence of my very random world.

PM: [laughs]

EC: And it will be a house band situation, and I have no idea who's playing with me.

PM: Oh. Now, I saw that on the site, but I don't understand the gig. What is that, exactly?

EC: The Midnight Jamboree?

PM: Uh-huh.

EC: That's the old-time traditional show that took place at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, when the Opry was at the Ryman. There would be Ernest Tubb's Midnight Jamboree, and the party resumed at midnight on Saturday night. That still goes on.

PM: Oh!

EC: And it's broadcast on radio. But they moved it from downtown to the Texas Troubadour Theater, which is over off Music Valley Drive, because the Opry is over there, and Opryland Hotel is over there, so people come from the Opry. And then some people come in who are just cult fans of what goes on there. You have to see this.

PM: That sounds totally cool.

EC: It's like a parallel universe, but it is a beautiful place. I mean, artists like Darryl McCall, and these great old country singers are featured. It's great, it really is. Jett Williams is hosting tomorrow night, and she's a friend of mine.

PM: So you'll just show up with charts?

EC: Uh-huh, show up with charts.

PM: And just hope that the charts are really great.

EC: It's on a wing and a prayer.

PM: You already know that those charts are golden.

EC: Charts are golden. I'm also not going to choose the most difficult thing that I have.

[laughter]

EC: Yeah. I'm going to make, hopefully, a good decision about what I'm going to take them, and if they haven't heard it before, I'm going to give them a count, click it in. And when you've been in this situation where you don't have lots of resources and you just have to keep struggling, you get really good at winging it. And I have no fear--

[laughter]

EC: --of winging it with charts tomorrow night.

PM: Well, you needn't have any fear. Since we're all here, let me ask you how you came to join forces with our friend and your new manager, David Macias of Emergent Marketing.

EC: All right! He's my superman. I had put together a little independent album last summer, because I was going to Europe and needed some product, and could not afford the $9.25 a unit that Warner Brothers wants to charge me for my own record--

PM: Yikes!

EC: --to go over there and sell. So I put together this little project, which I needed to do, and was excited to do, got with some girlfriends, had a photo shoot, had a blast. One of my best friends is a great graphic artist, put it all together. Whipped it up, packaged it up, went to Europe and sold it. And to come back during the winter, and I'm still paddling around town sort of trying to start the next thing, I don't know what it's going to be, and one of my contacts being Pete Fisher from the Grand Ole Opry--

PM: He's a good man.

EC: --and he emailed me David's name. He said, "These folks might be a good match for you and what you have." So I emailed David, immediately he emailed me back. We met at Sherlock Holmes Pub--[to David] remember that? It seems like twenty years ago [laughs] and it was like three months ago or something, I don't even know how long. And yeah, he had his notepad and his pen, and started just planning it all out. Immediately, unlike any experience I'd had before, everything that he was saying was going to happen, started happening.

PM: Right.

EC: They were concrete things. It was not this big vague picture, "We're going to build a market of your demographic," and all of that. It was like, "No, this is the obvious thing to do, and then we'll try this, then we'll try this." Sort of reacting to opportunity, which is also how I've operated. And it's been...so far, so good, he hasn't killed me yet!

[laughter]  continue

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