Elizabeth Cook on Rehab, David Letterman and Piercing New Album
Elizabeth Cook has logged more than 400 performances on the Grand Ole Opry, sat in on a handful of howlingly funny chats with David Letterman during the final years of his CBS Late Show run, snagged a long-running stint as host of her own freewheeling radio show (Apron Strings on Sirius XM’s Outlaw Country channel), and done a guest voice-over gig on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim animated series Squidbillies. But one thing the Central Florida native hadn’t done in the last six years was release a new album. Instead, she spent much of that time navigating — and ultimately emerging from — a personal minefield that left divorce, rehab, a house fire and more than a few deaths of loved ones in its wake.
Unapologetically country from her 2002 major-label debut, Hey Y’all, through the more offbeat Balls and 2010’s Welder, Cook’s country pedigree and her Dolly Parton-inspired twang have remained two of her most striking musical characteristics. But what the Opry, and Cook’s more ardent “country” listeners will think of Album Number Five, the magnificently entertaining Exodus of Venus, remains to be seen.
Produced by Dexter Green, and featuring songs penned with the man she calls a “gentle-giant genius” (she also calls him her boyfriend), Exodus of Venus responds to tough life lessons with dark humor. Even so, the lighter moments are tempered with harsh observations of her new reality, which includes the collapse of her marriage to musician Tim Carroll, the diagnosis of a chemical imbalance in her brain, and the residual effects of a fire at her family’s homestead — along with the 2012 death of her father and the loss of other close family members (her mother, a singer from West Virginia, died in 2008). There were seismic shifts on the business front, too, as she cut ties with her manager and agent.
“Everything’s different, everything’s new,” Cook tells Rolling Stone Country. “How can the record not be different? I’m on a different planet than I was six years ago.”
Rather than revisiting all that tragedy and upheaval, Exodus of Venus finds Cook learning new ways to express herself. And although the songs may have a harder edge than ever before, in conversation Cook can still toss out witty quips that’ll take your breath away. Yet, while recalling the harrowing after-effects of a notorious missing-child case that continues to haunt Nashville residents 13 years later, she lets her guard down with a few unexpected tears. That’s when shit suddenly gets real. The song that addresses that event, the absolutely devastating “Tabitha Tuders’ Mama,” cuts a little too close to home for the singer, whose upbringing was fraught with the effects of her father’s alcoholism and his eventual prison sentence.
Bemused now by the rumors surrounding her relationship with singer-songwriter and close friend Todd Snider, she was stunned when her management at the time strongly urged her to go to rehab instead of embarking on a planned tour with him. Insistent as she is that drug addiction was not an issue at the root of her rehab stint, once she emerged from the facility, the songs starting taking shape, including the non-autobiographical “Methadone Blues.” The record melds Green’s fierce production with Cook’s raw vocals (think Sinead O’Connor and Little Feat meet Loretta Lynn high on an Appalachian mountaintop). Cook sat down with Rolling Stone Country recently to talk about her new album, the shocking realities of the rehab experience and how musician friends, including Wynonna, bring out her inner Secret Service agent.