A Conversation with Elizabeth Cook (continued)

PM: You've been playing abroad a lot in recent years, right?

EC: Yeah. Last year we played in Korea, Poland, Sweden and Norway.

PM: Wow. Have you been much to the UK?

EC: No, never.

PM: Because that seems like, hey, that's a good fit for you.

EC: Sure does.

PM: They like real country music over there--

EC: Yeah.

PM: --which includes yours, of course. Who books your foreign dates?

EC: In Asia and Eastern Europe, it was Judy Seal. Festivals or military is what I've had so far. I have not yet had the experience of going overseas and playing the little club circuits, which I'd really like to do.

PM: Yeah, that's what we've got to get David to do, hook you up in the UK.

One of my favorite people and musicians is all over this record, Kenny Vaughan.

EC: Yeah. [laughs] He's been with me since that Blue record, the very beginning.

PM: He and I are old cronies. I love Kenny Vaughan. I've not seen it yet, but my sister has a tape of--she saw him play on Sessions at 54th, the show from New York, and I guess she caught him when he was playing with Lucinda--

EC: Yeah, I remember that.

PM: Kenny was one of two guitar players. And she says that on the tape a guy in the audience kind of stands up and says, "Let the geek play!"

EC: Oh!

[laughter]

EC: What did Kenny do?

PM: I don't know. I haven't seen the tape. But I keep forgetting to get a copy of that tape, so [laughs]--

EC: Kenny!

PM: He'll probably say, "I remember that night." [laughs]

EC: I don't know. He might not. He has an insatiable appetite for playing guitar, and will literally go from the stage of the Ryman and get on stage with somebody at the most not happening bar on Lower Broadway and play until 2 a.m.

PM: Right. He's one of those guys, I know, that is always playing the guitar. You can call him up at any time of day and you don't have to say, "What are you doing?" You know what he's doing, he's playing the guitar. [laughs]

EC: Right, right.

PM: He's walking around the house playing the guitar and he picked up the phone, maybe.

EC: Yeah, yeah.

PM: Have your songs been covered by other artists?

EC: A little bit, but not to any great extent that anybody would really know. It's a strange experience to hear somebody else singing your song--but no, not really.

PM: And have you seen any action with your songs, or much action, in film or TV?

EC: Yeah, surprisingly so--keeping in mind how little support or thrust there has been in that world, it's been very surprising. Shocking, really. The Blue album that nobody knows about, Steve Buscemi got and became a fan of--

PM: Steve Buscemi got it?

EC: Yeah, and he used a song off of it in a movie called Animal Factory that had Mickey Rourke and Willem Dafoe and Edward Furlong in it.

PM: Yikes.

EC: Yeah. And it's this prison movie. There's this scene where the wardens are these big old bad--just sloppy old slob guys that nobody likes. And they're listening to this old radio, and a song of mine is playing.

[We lose a line or two here, turning the tape over.]

EC: I don't know how any of these people got my record. But there's this young independent film company out in California, and they made a film that came out last year called American Reunion, and it's on some of the independent film festivals. They used the song "Blue Shades." It's about a class reunion that takes place after twenty years, and they never make it to the reunion, but everybody coming home and bumping into each other, and the complexity of the story--

PM: Is it a cool film?

EC: I loved it, yeah.

PM: Oh, wow.

EC: It just freaks you out! My song comes on, and I'm singing for like two minutes during it, going up and down in the mix. But it's wild.

PM: That's totally cool.  continue

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