MP3 Liz Carlisle - Half & Half

Liz Carlisle is a promising local songwriter with a pure, welcoming soprano and a knack for smart folk-pop balladry - Scott Alarik, Boston Globe

10 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Modern Folk, COUNTRY: Country Folk



Details:
"Liz Carlisle is a promising local songwriter with a pure, welcoming soprano and a knack for smart folk-pop balladry" - Scott Alarik, The Boston Globe

"Half & Half is a remarkably well-rounded record, full of soaring melodies and soft-voiced intimacies, stories of love and longing, all revealed through the lens of Carlisle's glassy, sweet-toned voice." - The Missoulian.

Just months after her 21st birthday, country singer-songwriter Liz Carlisle releases her debut major studio album, Five Star Day. This release follows 2004's Half & Half, the independent CD that firmly established the Montana native's presence on the talent-laden New England music scene.

Five Star Day finds Carlisle coming into her own as a mature, confident, unapologetically youthful commentator on the world around her. Produced by Russell Wolff and engineered by Neale Eckstein at Fox Run Studios, the album features Carlisle's characteristically direct songwriting, as well as the traditional number Little Sadie, Wolff original St. Angela, and four Carlisle/Wolff co-writes. Musicians include drummer Dave Mattacks (Fairport Convention, Mary Chapin Carpenter), bass player Pete Greenup, guitarists Mike Levine and Colin Sapp, British fiddler Jonathan Potts, as well as Wolff on guitars, vocals, and keyboard. Singer-songwriters Greg Greenway and Dave Crossland each sit in for one track, and Barbara Kessler contributes several harmony vocals.

Born and raised in Missoula, Montana, Liz Carlisle left Big Sky Country at age 18 to study ethnomusicology at Harvard University. She soon found her way to the Club Passim open mic where she first met Wolff. Liz began playing in New England, and was soon touring as far away as England and Scotland during summer break. In May 2004, Carlisle released Half & Half, her second full-length studio album. A reflection of her in-between identity, the CD was recorded half in Montana, half in Boston, and featured both fully-produced tracks and bare bones voice and guitar arrangements. Her first collaboration with Wolff, the release garnered considerable attention from critics and fans alike - landing Carlisle national and international airplay as well as press from such publications as The Boston Globe. While touring to support the album, Carlisle found a niche in the New England folk scene, playing such respected venues as Club Passim and the Nameless Coffeehouse. Recently selected as a Kerrville New Folk Finalist, Carlisle is fast gaining a national following on the folk circuit as well.

Influenced as much by her father's James Taylor records as by the Nashville hits she heard on the radio growing up, Carlisle straddles the boundary between folk and country. Both her delivery and her voice are straightforward and clear, stripping away artifice to reach directly into the heart of her listeners. She writes from experience - exploring the themes of transition and coming-of-age that have marked her own journey. Though she first became known for heart-breaking fingerstyle ballads, Carlisle (who first to came to Boston to study jazz drumset at Berklee's summer performance program) also knows how to rock out.