Elizabeth Butler was that kid...the one locked away in her Savannah, Georgia bedroom as a teenager, poring over the liner notes of albums from Cat Stevens, Carole King, and Dan Fogelberg. She took in melody and song construction and lyrics while listening with the volume up way too loud. It is a fitting portrait of an artist that embraces every aspect of a music career with gusto, from writing, playing, recording, collaborating, and navigating the business. This holistic approach to her career shines brightly on Love and Loss and Stuff Like That, her first solo release. Butler grew up steeped in music in non-traditional sense. From her dad's love of Roy Clark on Hee Haw and listening to Eddy Arnold records on Sunday afternoons, to singing the Georgia Tech fight song with her siblings, music was always a presence in the household. She received a Sears guitar on her eleventh birthday, and while the first song she learned was "House of the Rising Sun", she covered a few like "King of the Road" and "Moon River" as a nod to her dad. She performed wherever the opportunity presented itself and began playing in church at age thirteen, eventually landing a job as a church musician in her teens. She began making homemade demos and sending them to A&R executives while still in high school. Keeping up with music while earning her nursing degree, she made her first professional demo when she was twenty-one and received a good response, though no record label knew exactly what to do with it. Never one to wait for something to happen, Butler decided that forging her own path in music was the way to go. In 1999, she founded Running Home Records, her own label, in Houston, Texas. She was also performing with Running Home, and Americana-country-jazz duo with Suzanne Comeaux Bucher that quickly garnered airplay and a fan base across the country. While she was raising her family, Butler also began to pursue film and television licensing opportunities as an alternative to the traditional musician's path of touring. Her compositions have been placed in the music library of Discovery Channel, among others. Butler is releasing her first solo album, Love and Loss and Stuff Like That, in summer 2014. She describes the album as a scrapbook concept, as if the listener is taking pieces of an artist's journal and absorbing a life story in frames and vignettes. There are the bright spots, the levity of singing along on the highway with the windows rolled down and letting things be as they are. Then there are songs like "Come Back to Me" featuring Solveig Whittle and Allison Lueking, that bring to light those concentrated moments of sadness that all humans experience, formed into songscapes that not only express healing through the lyrics but also the layers of instrumentation and vocals. "We wanted to capture vocally the tangle of emotions that occurs in the grieving process," she explains. Likewise, the lead single from the album, "Time Before, Time After" is a reflection on how life can change the moment someone enters your life. Part of the draw of the recording process for Butler hearkens back to those days in her bedroom as a teenager, enveloped in her liner notes and absorbing songs through endless listens on the stereo. Butler describes her style as a "smooth gumbo of sound", and the listener can easily pick country, pop, jazz, and blues influences amidst an undeniably unique sound that is steeped in years of practice and stacks of vinyl. She co-produced Love and Loss and Stuff Like That with Troy Warren, Jr., a multi-instrumentalist who back-and-forths with Butler on everything from instrumentation to arrangement. "We try to break down and build up with each song...it's a picture we're painting each time we record," she explains. To Butler, recording is the chance to let her compositions reflect life as a whole. "It's the juxtaposition of the big romantic swells with those small, intimate moments, and there is a craft to recording that." Ultimately, Love and Loss and Stuff Like That is Elizabeth Butler's message to the world that no one is alone in the journey, and whether it be finding love, navigating through a loss, or simply driving down the highway with the radio turned up, Butler is a willing and discerning companion. -Jana Pochop for Social Thinkery.com