Five Star Day by Liz Carlisle

She has toured relentlessly to support her new project, with stops at the Kerrville, Falcon Ridge, New Bedford, and Great Waters Festivals as well as several British festivals and openers for major country and acoustic acts.

All the while, the public school graduate from Missoula, Montana’s Hellgate High School maintained an outstanding academic record at Harvard University, where she graduated Summa cum Laude this past June, after delivering the undergraduate commencement address. She was one of just 24 members of her class elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior, and she was awarded The David McCord Prize in the arts from Quincy House. Her senior thesis in ethnomusicology, a study of the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, was nominated for a Hoopes Prize, Harvard’s highest honor for undergraduate scholarship. In addition, Carlisle was nominated for the campus-wide Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts and the Women’s Leadership Award.

“For me, being a Harvard student and a country singer-songwriter makes perfect sense,” Carlisle says. “The things I have learned on the road and from the people I meet through music have definitely enriched my scholarship. And the things I have learned at Harvard, both in and out of the classroom, have made me a better songwriter and a better person.”

What critics have noticed in Carlisle’s writing and stage presence is a powerful ability to erase the boundaries between country, pop, and acoustic music, red state and blue state. The Boston Globe calls Five Star Day “A collection of original songs that cull the twang and heart of country music, the soul-searching of folk, and the lift of pop.” Northeast Performer wrote that “country might not be the word for Carlisle’s sound; perhaps a more fitting term might be cross-country, as Carlisle brings her sound across the continent and back again." And Country Standard Time offered the following praise: "Whether writing about the "silver blue sky" of her native land ("Montana"), potentially life-changing decisions that appear out of the blue ("Don't Think Too Hard") or growing up in "Flyover Country" ("9/8 Central"), Carlisle's writing is crisp and insightful beyond her years and totally absent the narcissism and introspection that so often afflicts the modern singer-songwriter crowd."

“Nothing makes me happier than to be the vehicle for cultural exchange,” Carlisle says. “If I take back a little bit of Cambridge with me every time I go West, if I convince one person that East coast people aren’t out-of-touch snobs, I’m doing my job. If I bring a little of Montana here, convince a few people that the heartland isn’t just a bunch of dumb guys drinking too much beer in old pickups, I’m doing my job.” Carlisle describes country music as her native blues form, a music that cuts to the core of human experience and allows people to connect on a deeper level. “Everyone understands what it feels like to be in love, to miss your hometown, or to suffer a heartbreak,” Carlisle says.

Perhaps the most powerful testament to Carlisle’s cross cultural approach is her team of supporters. “People often ask me how I’ve been able to do so many things in these last four years,” Carlisle says. “The answer is, ‘with a lot of help.’”

First and foremost Carlisle credits producer Russell Wolff, whom she met at an open mic at Club Passim when she was a college freshman. An alt-pop songwriter from New York, whose songwriting and performance style has been compared to bands like the Barenaked Ladies, Wolff was not an obvious collaborator for the idealistic Montana country songwriter. Yet the two shared a basic love of pop music and a gutsy approach. “Russell is one of the few people I’ve met who doesn’t worry about conventional obstacles,” Carlisle says.

Wolff introduced Carlisle to the other essential component of her recent success, Neale Eckstein. A house concert presenter, producer, mixer, and studio engineer, Eckstein is well known in the acoustic music community for not only helping artists make records, but for helping them promote their work as well. He listened to Wolff’s praise of Carlisle during the several months that the two were at work on Wolff’s record. Finally, in the summer of 2004, he met Carlisle in person and heard her play. Within a few days, he agreed to work with Carlisle and Wolff on Carlisle’s first major studio project. “Neale and his wife Laurie became like my family away from home,” Carlisle says. “I don’t know what I would have done without them.”

Carlisle and her team of supporters have much to celebrate. With both Carlisle and Wolff just graduated from Harvard, and a full summer of international touring already underway, a new CD is in the works for 2007 release. Carlisle will also stay in involved at her alma mater as a house master’s assistant and an advisor to other young songwriters and musicians who want to pursue a career even as they pursue their liberal arts education. “Nothing is impossible,” she says. “Or at least, I haven’t managed to find it yet.”

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