DESCRIPTION:
It would be easy to misconstrue Lissie. Slight and blonde, a pretty, guitar-playing slip-of-a-thing, you might easily take her for a sweet Midwestern girl, a freckled balladeer borne of milk and cookies and cornfields. More fool you. For all the flaxen hair and big blue eyes, this girl is smart and gutsy and tough, with a big old voice to match it: Stevie Nicks taking Neko Case by the scruff of the neck, Laurel Canyon prettiness stewed in campfire and bourbon; there is, after all, a certain vocal quality that only a decade of beer and cigarettes can bring.

She was born in Rock Island, Illinois, one of the Quad Cities, on the banks of the Mississippi River. It's the city that inspired Rock Island Line, and that bore Bix Beiderbecke, it's the stuff of spring floods and pick-up trucks and bona fide blue collar country music. In the spring of 2006 she moved to LA and started her own night with musician friends at a bar called Crane's Hollywood Tavern in her neighbourhood, which she named Beachwood Rockers' Society.

Little by little things seemed to come together; she recorded a five-track EP named "Why You Runnin'" with her friend Bill Reynolds of Band of Horses that caught something of a fire in the States last year. She headed to Nashville to record with Jacquire King (who was fresh from working with the Kings of Leon). What came out of it was the bulk of her debut album, "Catching A Tiger"; 12 songs that range from bluesy-folk to unfettered pop and showcase both her remarkable voice and her songwriting chops.