It is no surprise that her homecoming back to Texas from Colorado was a warm one. 2008 was a banner year for singer/songwriter Elizabeth Wills. It began in early spring with 5 showcases at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas and by May, she had played from New York to LA. Elizabeth also played the main stage at the Kerrville Wine and Music Festival and the Austin City Limits Festival in 2008. She was honored to be asked to perform with Willie Nelson, Carolyn Wonderland, Ruthie Foster, Jimmie Vaughn and others at the famous Backyard in Austin for their final show before closing their doors. She has shared the stage with other great singer/songwriters such as Sara Hickman, John Hiatt, Janis Ian, David Wilcox, Patrice Pike, Eliza Gilkyson, and Matt Scannell from Vertical Horizon, just to name a few. "Certain voices wrap around the listener's heart with instant
familiarity and warmth, like a long lost friend you've been waiting to
meet...that's what elizabeth wills' voice brings to mind. and in regards to her
songwriting, her song " in the broken" captures the essence of everything
a song should be: heartfelt, clarified intimacy delivered with sincere
conviction needing nothing more than elizabeth's warm voice and acoustic guitar
arpeggios." - Sara Hickman...
Along with treasured music of Joni Mitchell, which even at a young age resonated inside her and helped make sense of her world, Wills finds that art and expression of every kind “have influenced my life, the way I see the world and my desire to make a difference.”
Often, the most revealing and motivating art is the manifesting of a burning, conscious and committed resolution to put into the world what the artist sees is needed there. That moral and creative compass is plain in every note and word of her music.
“When I was first starting out,” Wills observes, “my music was folkier, so finding a deeper rhythm in the music -- finding the heartbeat -- became a real integral part of my last record, FLY.” Recorded at New York’s Battery Studios, FLY features co-writes by Corey Rooney (Brian McKnight, Santana, Jennifer Lopez) and Ryan Toby (Mary J. Blige, Chris Brown) and the playing of multi-instrumentalist and musical director Alex Moseley.
Integral, also to the heartbeat of Wills' music, are the many shades and facets of her voice, calling to mind angel-voiced chanteuses like Sarah McLachlan, the British pop of the Cocteau Twins and Annie Lennox . As a whole, Elizabeth says that her music is about spreading one's wings, coming into one's own and coming from a higher place — letting go of fear and expectations, and just allowing oneself to catch the jet stream, and fly. It's no mystery why Wills has been nominated for and won several awards and accolades for her voice and songwriting through the years. To name a few, Elizabeth has won the prestigious B.W. Stevenson Songwriting competition and has been a finalist in the New Folk Competition at the Kerrville Folk Festival.
Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Wills grew up in a house full of good music: Aretha, Joni, Stevie. Her father and brother are both drummers, and she was encouraged to sing. At age 6, when she started playing piano, she wrote her first song, she says, with a laugh: it was about her favorite stuffed pet elephant, Peanuts. While singing in church and school choirs, she began writing on piano, and by her late teens— she was falling in love with records by the likes of Joni Mitchell, Nanci Griffith, Emmylou Harris, and Willie Nelson and also was influenced by bands like U2 and the Cure—her parents bought her a guitar, which led her to open-mike nights and then gigs at such esteemed rooms as La Zona Rosa with her trio at college in Austin.
Rivers, her first label release, was a collection of coming-of-age songs that she performed at coffeehouses and bars in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma when she was in her early twenties. In 2004, with the help of producer, friend and multi-instrumentalist Mitch Marine (Brave Combo, Dwight Yoakam, Tripping Daisy) she cut the rootsy Call It What You Will, which she dubs sort of a “trip into the hill country of Texas, kind of a way to access the place I’m from, and the deep soul of where my music is from."
Like the novels, photography, music and painting that has touched her, Elizabeth Wills’ music is made to capture the living and breathing truth of the world.
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