A Conversation with Elizabeth Cook (continued)

PM: Are you much of a reader? I ask because it's sometimes surprising who is and who isn't. Do you enjoy the world of books?

EC: I do enjoy it. I like books and movies, and use them for the same purpose, to find a little inspiration or just entertainment.

PM: And read anything lately that turned you on?

EC: My favorite thing that I've read lately is a book called Popular Music From Vittula by Mikael Niemi. It's a book that's been translated from Finnish into English, and it's connected short stories from a little boy's perspective and his discovery, through the 50s and 60s, of popular music, of the Beatles, of forming a band, of sitting in a sauna with his dad and his grandfather, and funerals and weddings and drunken brawls, and just his whole world.

PM: Wow.

EC: And it's extremely entertaining. But it takes me a long time to read a book, because I don't have as much time to read. I knit when I travel--knit and read and watch movies.

PM: I was going to ask you that: are there other things you like to do with time when you're on the road or home? Are you into gardening or--

EC: Yeah, gardening, too. I've got a lot of flowers planted around my house right now. And we've got a tomato bush and a cucumber vine. I've got an Heirloom tomato bush I'm very excited about--there's not a tomato on it yet, but I've not given up. And my parents also have a big garden out at their farm, and they bring us the real food, and we just kind of... [laughs] And I have a little rose garden. Every anniversary, that's what Tim and I do. We plant a little rose in our rose garden for our anniversary. We can't buy diamonds and vacations and stuff like that, so we do that instead. [laughs]

PM: Wow. How long are you guys together?

EC: We've been together eight years, and we've been married two.

PM: Religiously or spiritually speaking, how were you raised? I mean, what you've described so far didn't sound like religion was a big part of the deal. [laughs]

EC: Well, yeah, but oddly, again, adding to my random life, my father then later became involved in the AA Program, which is sort of a spiritual guide through life.

PM: Certainly, yeah, most of my family has been there, too.

EC: It does utilize scripture, so that became part of my household, but not until I was around eight or nine, really. When I was smaller, my mother would dress me up on Sunday mornings, and right around the block was this old white stucco Spanish church. A little church with a big oak tree and Spanish moss hanging down. It was the Sunset Heart Church of God, and it was an extremely intense musical, wild Pentacostal church. That's where I would go on Sunday mornings. Then even through my teenage years, I went there, up until we moved to Georgia. And some great musical experiences and times I had were there.

PM: Wow.

EC: Also a realization of learning about religion and the extremes of it.

PM: And where are you now, as an adult, with that side of life, spirit or religion--

EC: Still trying to figure it out.

PM: Yeah, right. Ain't it the truth?

EC: Don't know.

PM: That's a beautiful answer. You'd be surprised how little I get that one. And it's something I always ask about, it's important. You so rarely hear, "You know, I don't know."

EC: I really don't. I wish I did. I wish I read something or saw something or somebody told me something that made me go, "Oh, well, okay."

PM: Yeah.

EC: I just have to trust that I have a good heart, and I try to operate and do the right thing and be a good person and not be bad all the time, and hope that leads me to someplace good, here, later, never, in a million years, I don't know.

PM: I don't think you can go wrong in that way.

[laughter]

EC: It's sort of noncommittal. I do have commitment issues, as well.

PM: Well, eight years, you're not toxically so, anyway.

EC: [laughs]

PM: How driven would you say you are about your career or about the pursuit of music in general?

EC: I'm extremely driven--but not necessarily just about music, it's usually whatever I'm doing at the moment. If I'm cleaning my house, cleaning my floors, I'm in the corners. If I'm listening to music, all the TVs have to be off.

[laughter]

PM: Even in the modest way that you guys live your life, is there a place that you Tim like to go when you get away? Is there a place that you–

EC: We go to Mom and Daddy's. When we're home, usually like once a week or so--my mom is a great old hillbilly cook. She cooks a lot, and Tim loves that. And they have a dish network, and we watch the Braves.

PM: Watch the Braves. [laughs]

EC: And they have a big, long deck that sits on the side of their little single-wide trailer, overlooks a holler, and there are bird feeders and flowers everywhere. We sit on that swing and just zone out. And it's blackberry season, the blackberries are starting to come in, which is Tim's big thing. His big stress in the summertime is to try to be out at the farm enough to pick enough blackberries--

PM: [laughs]

EC: --to get Mama to freeze so we can have blackberry cobblers through winter. And every year it's like a contest to see if he picked enough--

PM: You're killing me.

EC: --to make cobblers through the winter or not, and also not to get red bugs--which he does pretty good. But it amazes me, we'll go out there in the middle of July, and he'll put on long sleeves, long pants, Daddy's got an old jug with the top cut out of it and a rope slung through it, and he'll strap that over him. And he'll go out there with dishwashing gloves on and pick and pick and pick, and come back drenched in sweat and have to get right in the shower to keep the red bugs off of him.

PM: Because the red bugs are bad, yeah.

EC: And then Mama will rinse the berries out in the sink, and then put them in freezer bags and put them in the deep freeze. And he'll do that--well, they're only in for a few weeks. And Mama has been telling him, "It was fields white as snow with blooms, and now it's red, they're all turning red, and they're going to be turning black here soon."

PM: [laughs]  continue

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