Metro Pulse/Music/Lizzie West

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What:
Junior Brown with Matt King and Lizzie West

When:
Thursday, July 31, 6-10 p.m.

Where:
Sundown in the City, Old City Courtyard

Cost:
Free, but donations encouraged

Lizzie West spreads the gospel of self-empowerment

by Paige M. Travis

In "Time to Cry," the first song on Holy Road...Freedom Songs, Lizzie West, her voice stretched to the breaking point of emotion, sings, "Now girls we must remain / you wouldn't wanna scare 'em with all of that sass. So let's review the rules again." It's a story of waiting, choosing the right moment to either accept defeat or stick your thumb out and take the next ride that comes along. The first notes of plaintive harmonica set a weary tone, but as the pace builds with drums, bass and the high-pitched, almost-shouted backing vocals, optimism kicks in. When the harmonica returns in the song's final 30 seconds, the sound is triumphant.

Fear, hesitation, and victory over both is Lizzie West's story so far. Since the April 2003 release of Holy Road, she's gathered fans across the world like rats to the Pied Piper, or for a metaphor more suited to West's beauty, like migrating butterflies to their homeland. West, who turns 30 this year, is alluring to fans and record execs alike. Her sweet, strained voice earns comparisons to Natalie Merchant's, and she looks like a thrift store Marilyn Monroe. A cynic might suspect she's a studio creation, an innocent plucked from the New York subway where she was busking not so many years ago only to be marketed and sold to commercial radio and major-chain record stores.

That cynic is wrong. West is a do-it-yourself, self-fulfilling prophecy who has found luck in a vicious industry.

The New York native spent her early adulthood traveling the country, writing stories and plays. In 1995, she bought a guitar in Nashville, and the songs "all came flooding out."

"I knew that what was coming out of me was so organic. It was folk and there were stories." she says. "And yet I knew that I was not a retro child. I was pulling from history and American music but I wanted the methods to have a place in contemp-orary culture. It was really conflicting and hard in a lot of ways, but I was committed."

When she was playing street corners and at her sister's bar in Brooklyn, West felt that something bigger was happening, that she wasn't just writing songs to fulfill a personal need; she was having big ideas that needed a larger audience than rush hour commuters.

"I didn't feel like an underground alternative artist," she says, "When I was in the subway, I felt like I was speaking a language to the people. I didn't want to stay on the outskirts." So she was lucky to be discovered by HBO, who used two of her songs in a movie, and Spike Lee, who used her song "Holy Road" in a commercial. She used the money from these breaks to go on tour, being filmed along the way by Atar Schimmel. That film is still in the making and may include footage from West's July 31 show in Knoxville.

To label West as simply lucky doesn't give her skills enough credit. The first version of Holy Road was a self-made project with handmade packaging. "Half of it was me, and half was with my friends," she says, describing the result as an "alt-country, rootsy thing." Those simple guitar sounds and harmonies linger on the polished version.

"When I signed to Warner Brothers, we made a deal. I told them, I want to make a record that reaches people. And it took me a year to find a team that could make it happen." She joined up with Brian Holloway and Mark Jameson, who had worked on her four-song EP that came out in late 2002, a kind of "meet Lizzie West" project that includes "Chariots Rise," the song used in Steven Shainberg's 2002 film Secretary, and "I'm Your Man," a song by West's hero and guru Leonard Cohen.

West's intention is to make a profound impression on, and connection with, her listeners.

"I was 23, and I wasn't living the life I wanted. I didn't feel like I deserved to be happy and do what I wanted." When she turned her fantasy of writing and performing songs into a reality, she realized she was in charge of making that life worth living. And if she could do it, anyone could. She shares her revelations through a fan club/street team in which members are Kickers—"catalysts for consciousness, individual and or collective"—who spread the gospel of Lizzie West and earn credits for merchandise. West has played in high schools for younger fans who can't come to night shows at clubs and bars. "I look at those girls and boys, and I see that they need some honest voice." West particularly wants to speak to girls who need role models as they learn how to be young women.

"We aren't passive entities. We are instruments, creatures that can actually participate in our existence and create it. That's something I've been doing. It was an experiment, and it works." As a writer, West thinks of her life as a story; she's the writer and the text. "If I'm reading the story, am I who I want to be?"

It's still too early to know what role Lizzie West will play in the full-length story of her life. Right now, West might have characterized herself best in her own song: "She might be crazy, man, but I tell you what, she might be wise."