Elizabeth Butler was that kid...the one locked away in her Savannah, GA bedroom as a teenager poring over the liner notes of albums from Cat Stevens, Carole King, and Dan Fogelberg. She took in melody and song construction and lyrics while listening with the volume up way too loud. It is a fitting portrait of an artist that embraces every aspect of a music career with gusto, from writing, playing, recording, collaborating, and navigating the business. This holistic approach to her career shines brightly on Love and Loss And Stuff Like That, her first solo release.
Butler grew steeped in a diversity of musical styles, from the Eddy Arnold records her Dad loved to Tchaikovsky and Bernstein. She started playing guitar at 11 and began playing in church at age 13, eventually landing a job as a church musician in her teens. She began making homemade demos and sending them to A&R companies while still in high school. Keeping up with music while earning her nursing degree, she mad
Biography- Elizabeth Butler
Elizabeth Butler was that kid...the one locked away in her Savannah, GA bedroom as a teenager poring over the liner notes of albums from Cat Stevens, Carole King, and Dan Fogelberg. She took in melody and song construction and lyrics while listening with the volume up way too loud. It is a fitting portrait of an artist that embraces every aspect of a music career with gusto, from writing, playing, recording, collaborating, and navigating the business. This holistic approach to her career shines brightly on Love and Loss And Stuff Like That, her first solo release.
Butler grew steeped in a diversity of musical styles, from the Eddy Arnold records her Dad loved to Tchaikovsky and Bernstein. She started playing guitar at 11 and began playing in church at age 13, eventually landing a job as a church musician in her teens. She began making homemade demos and sending them to A&R companies while still in high school. Keeping up with music while earning her nursing degree, she made her first professional demo when she was 21. In 1999 she founded Running Home Records, her own label in Houston, TX. She was also performing with Running Home, an Americana-country-jazz duo with Suzanne Comeaux Bucher that quickly garnered airplay and a fanbase across the country. While she was raising her family, Butler also began to pursue film and TV licensing opportunities as an alternative to the traditional musician's path of touring. Her compositions have been licensed by The Discovery Channel among others.
Butler is releasing her first solo album, Love and Loss and Stuff Like That, in early 2014. She describes the album as a scrapbook concept, as if the listener is taking pieces of an artist's journal and absorbing a life story in frames and vignettes. Part of the draw of the recording process for Butler hearkens back to those days in her bedroom as a teenager, enveloped in liner notes and absorbing songs through endless listens on the stereo. Butler calls her style a "smooth gumbo of sound," and the listener can easily pick out country, pop, jazz, and blues influences amidst an undeniably unique sound that is steeped in years of practice and stacks of vinyl. She co-produced Love and Loss and Stuff Like That with Troy Warren, Jr., a multi-instrumentalist who back-and-forths with Butler on everything from instrumentation to arrangement. To Butler, recording is the chance to let her compositions reflect life as a whole. "It's the juxtaposition of the big romantic swells with those small intimate moments, and there is a craft to recording that." Ultimately, Love and Loss and Stuff Like That is Elizabeth Butler's message to the world that no one is alone in their journey, and whether it be finding love, navigating through a loss, or simply driving down the highway with the radio turned up, Butler is a willing and discerning companion.
-Jana Pochop for Social Thinkery