Cooking Up a Storm
Elizabeth Cook writing songs and ‘touring like mad’
A country music crooner since the age of four, Elizabeth Cook (’96) is the youngest of six children 
who says that her own life resembles the lyrics of a country song. Cook’s parents played in country bands and her father served time for selling moonshine. “Music became part of what I knew,” said the singer.
Cook earned dual degrees from the University in accounting and computer information systems and as a student, she could be found working in the College of Business Administration computer lab, as a tutor for the athletic department and singing onstage at Statesboro nightspot Blind Willie’s. “Like many Georgia Southern grads, I got a viable education and had a really good time. I was able to participate in quarter pitcher night and keep my GPA up,” she said humorously. “I credit GSU with challenging me to balance fun and work. When I chose to make this my career, I had to take that and apply a business sense to it if it was going to work and I was going to make my student loan payments,” she said.
After graduation, Cook was traveling home to Florida one weekend when she received her first recording contract. Because she didn’t travel with a laptop, Cook stopped at an Ace Hardware store to pick up her contract via the store’s fax machine and the rest is history.
Since that time, Cook has performed more than 300 times at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and released five albums to rave reviews. Her latest, “Welder,” was produced by Don Was with backup vocals from Dwight Yoakam, Rodney Crowell and Buddy Miller.
In 2007, she was tapped to host the popular Sirius XM radio show “Elizabeth Cook’s Apron Strings,” on the Outlaw Country channel, which features interviews with country music legends.
“My memorable times have been getting to interview Connie Smith and Marty Stuart, Wanda Jackson, getting to be around Willie Nelson, Shooter Jennings and all the Outlaw Country family, and having my mother as a guest on the show the Mothers Day before she passed. Thanks to the satellite radio technology, I’ve also done my show under some pretty wild circumstances . . . from Japan, the UK and rolling down the Pacific Coast Highway,” she said.
Last fall, Cook charmed TV host David Letterman with her witty, honest portrayal of her Southern upbringing on his show, and she has since landed several TV and film roles. “These opportunities have kinda fallen from the sky,” she said.
And as for the future? “I am thinking on my next record and touring like mad.”