Eliza Lynn - voted best singer/songwriter in the 2006 Asheville Mountain Xpress Reader's Poll - sings with a voice that is "soulful to the point of tasting collards." Her debut CD, Frisky or Fair, was released in 2005 to critical acclaim and showcases Eliza's "near-perfect blend of honesty and integrity in songwriting... music that envelops you like wisps of smoke."
Born in Nashville, Tennessee then raised in Evanston, Illinois, Eliza grew up in a family focused on music and community activism. Singing always played a major role in her life. Even at two years old, friends and family who called on the phone were greeted with Eliza singing "Georgia on my Mind." Her passion for music embraced every aspect of her life and she was greatly influenced by her parents' extraordinary range of musical tastes including gospel, honky-tonk, political protest songs and folk tunes.
After college, Lynn embarked on a fascinating and eccentric job path. She spent a month at a Zen monastery in Minnesota, worked as a singer and dancer at Ghost Town in the Sky, NC, traveled briefly to China and returned to be a kitchen manager at a silent retreat center. Her most formative job came at the YWCA of Asheville, NC (2002 - 2006), where Eliza developed the Diabetes Wellness Project. This project was conceived to help bridge the gaps in community health disparities by empowering primarily low-income minorities to use exercise to manage their diabetes. Eliza became inspired by the participants' courage and found herself deeply motivated to follow her dreams of pursuing music full-time. She recorded Frisky or Fair in 2005 and found herself immersed in a thriving Asheville music scene.
In early 2007, Eliza was invited by the prestigious Putumayo World Music to contribute her track "Sing a New Song" to their July 2007 release "Americana." The album featured songs from some of the biggest names of the genre including Tim O'Brien, Robert Earl Keen, Old Crow Medicine Show and The Little Willies (Norah Jones), but it was newcomer Eliza Lynn's track that received constant media attention. Putumayo could see that Eliza was on the road to a flourishing career and proclaimed her to be "an enormous talent." She was asked to represent Putumayo and the album on a seven-city press tour on which Eliza appeared on morning news shows and radio stations along the East Coast. The highlight of the tour was appearing on XM Radio's Upop station; Ted Kelly and John Dowling were so enamored with Eliza that they invited her to talk and perform for a 2-hour segment.
Eliza is excited to release her sophomore release "The Weary Wake Up" and has found wonderful encouragement from her musically rich community. "Asheville is incredible," says Miss Lynn, "there is music everywhere, from pop to jazz to bluegrass and old-time to hip-hop to world music and fusions of all of these." This diverse mix of music greatly influenced her new release, but perhaps her greatest influence to the direction of the album came from local producers Danny Kadar (My Morning Jacket, The Avett Brothers) and Mike Alexander. Says Eliza of the recording sessions "they brought so much creativity to the table in doses of pop, R[and]B and soul - and I ate it all up!" From the banjo-picking R[and]B influenced "Conrad" to the soulful brass infused "Get On Up" to the bluesy ragtime piano driven "A Valley Ahead", one constant remains: the sultry voice of a woman that has traveled the world but found her home in North Carolina. "It is a wonderfully collaborative community and I am deeply grateful to live here."