Lori Willcuts




LORI WILLCUTS
Listen to Lori Willcuts' songs and you'll hear a voice that is world-wise but never world-weary. There is remarkable honesty in her self-penned lyrics, but there is unyielding hope as well. Rainbows & Waterfalls, her new album on Kleartone Records, resounds with moments of truth, whether she is memorializing the old man who faithfully sings love songs to a wife who can no longer hear him or re-assessing the fate of a woman who gives too much to her marriage.

BIOGRAPHY
Listen to Lori Willcuts’ songs and you’ll hear a voice that is world wise but never world weary. There is remarkable honesty in her self-penned lyrics, but there is unyielding hope as well. Rainbows & Waterfalls, her new and second album, resounds with moments of truth, whether she is memorializing the old man who faithfully sings love songs to a wife who can no longer hear him or re-assessing the fate of a woman who gives too much to her marriage.

In recognition of these talents, the Christian Country Music Association has nominated Willcuts for both its Female Vocalist of the Year and New Artist of the Year awards. In 2000, she performed at the Ryman Auditorium for the CCMA Awards Show, hosted that year by John Berry and Crystal Gayle.

The daughter of schoolteachers, Willcuts was born in southern California. She grew up enchanted by the music of such pop titans as the Kingston Trio, Bobbie Gentry, Simon & Garfunkel, the Beatles and Roger Miller. When she was in middle school, her family moved to Washington. She grew up there and in neighboring Oregon, where she now lives.

At 14, Willcuts became a member of The Lower Columbia Singers, a contemporary Christian music group that performed regionally most of the year but which spent its summers touring throughout the U. S. She remained with the Singers until she was 17.

Soon after graduating from high school, Willcuts enrolled at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon. While completing her degree in communications there, she was active in variety of university-sponsored musical and theatrical troupes. These alliances, which involved her performing everything from gospel to show tunes, broadened her already extensive musical repertoire.

Willcuts continued her musical journey after college, working as the lead singer with a number of bands that played the Pacific Northwest and Canada. A high point in those early days, she recalls, was opening for the Judds in Longview, Washington, just as the mother-daughter duo was becoming famous.

When Willcuts was in her late 20s, she began writing her own songs. This led ultimately to the issuance of her first album in 1998, I See An Angel on Quiet Man Records. By this time, Willcuts had discovered an emerging musical format called “positive country.” While keeping the distinctive sounds of country music, “positive country” avoided the traditional country themes of cheating, drinking and carousing to focus on such equally common subjects as hard work, spiritual devotion and love of family.

“I didn’t even know ‘positive country’ existed,” Willcuts says, “but I found I was already writing about all the things it stood for.” In 1999, Willcuts’ song, “I See An Angel,” went to the top of the Christian Country Music Assn. chart. Her involvement in this vibrant new format has brought Willcuts to Nashville frequently for showcases, recording sessions and appearances at CCMA conventions.

Willcuts turned to veteran musician and sound engineer Richie Owens to produce Rainbows & Waterfalls. A member of the East Tennessee musical clan sparkplugged by his first cousin, Dolly Parton, Owens has played on albums for REM and the Georgia Satellites, among dozens of others. He coproduced and led the band for Parton’s acclaimed 1998 Decca Records album, Hungry Again.

“How I got to know Richie,” Willcuts recalls, “was that I was doing this album with a different producer [in Owens’ studio]. And Richie had a better idea of the direction it should be going. So he kind of took over. He saw a lot of promise in the album.” To make the most of that promise, Owens brought in such stellar musicians to back Willcuts as Al Perkins and Larry Atamanuik, formerly of Emmylou Harris’ Nash Ramblers; Pat Flynn, late of New Grass Revival; and award-winning Ronnie McCoury, of the Del McCoury Band.

The first two singles from the album “I’ll Be Alright” and “I Will Live” are now being played at country and Americana stations nationwide. Fans can keep track of Willcuts and the album on this website. “I’ve been at this a long time,” says Willcuts, as she ponders a tour to unveil the music of Rainbows & Waterfalls live on stage, “but, in a way, I’m just starting out.”

It’s a magnificent start.