McGonigel's Mucky Duck

There are two Elizabeth Cooks. There’s the one who performs on the Grand Ole Opry, as she has for more than a decade, singing the straight-up country songs that make up the canon of that venerable establishment. 

Then there’s the singer-songwriter Elizabeth Cook whose best known lyric is “sometimes it takes balls to be a woman” and whose new album, Welder, includes lyrics about a “heroin addict sister,” a mullet-wearing, El Camino-driving boyfriend, and a “rock and roll man” frequently driven to fisticuffs by “cigarette ashes in a Budweiser can.”

The music on Welder careens well outside the bounds of Opryland, shifting from waltzes and bluegrassy numbers to alt-country, pop ballads, and flat-out rockers.

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