PRESS RELEASE:
LIZZIE WEST RETURNS WITH NEW SINGLE "FAMILY FOURTH" NEW ALBUM, THE KITCHEN DEMOS - SET FOR OCTOBER 12th Release Event…
Press inquiries contact: Perry Serpa/Vicious Kid Public Relations - Phone: 917 660-4137 - Email: perry@viciouskidpr.com
LIZZIE’S FIRST SONG BACK: Family Fourth of July, https://lizziewest.bandcamp.com/track/family-fourth
LIZZIE’S FIRST CONCERTS AND ALBUM BACK: About What Happened… (The Kitchen Demos Tour)
Columbia, MO– July 28, 2025 –
Critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Lizzie West is back, emerging from a twenty-year hiatus with her poignant new song, "Family Fourth," a sequel to her fan-favorite song "Family Christmas". This latest offering gives listeners a glimpse into her highly anticipated album, The Kitchen Demos, scheduled for release in October 2025. In celebration of the album release, West will play a rooted reunion show at Rose Music Hall in Columbia, MO on Sunday, October 12, matinee performance. 1pm doors. 2pm show. Limited tickets - Seated show with small standing room. Tickets $12 in advance. $15 day of. Introduced and Q & A hosted by Adam Saunders.
***
"Family Fourth" marks West’s return to commercial recording under her given name after a period spent writing under a pen name. The song’s themes of reconnection and familial bonds are timely as it arrives in the wake of the latest Independence Day holiday, prompting and anticipating reflection on personal histories and shared experiences for the year to come.
Says West, "Family Fourth" shares the ongoing tale of a family that we first met in 2002, when I released "Family Christmas"... It's the story of my own personal, national and generational healing, - about needing to break the chains of negative programming, find great people to share common ground with and start all over.”
The upcoming album, The Kitchen Demos, is a collection of previously unheard recordings, Recorded in the pantry at Lizzie’s little family homestead in the Catskills, from September 2024-January 2025. The album promises to showcase West’s signature blend of folk, gospel, ragtime, rocksteady, and mythos, with a focus on intimate storytelling and raw, emotive performances.
Lizzie explains, “The album was captured by me, in the early morning hours, when everyone else in the old farmhouse was still sleeping- long rich moments alone, just me and the songs, before I put my daughter on the bus each day.”
The tracks were recently heard by a dedicated fan who encouraged West to share them with the world. Said fan, or "fam" as Lizzie calls him, found her "hiding out in the Fox den" as she says - and they became good friends.
After trust was established, he spent a few months helping Lizzie excavate and organize her archives to see what they would be most keen to share with other fans like him. During that process, Lizzie gave him the artist's collection of new concert sketches... “(Andrew) chose a collection of solo demos that I had sent him as samples of a concert I was rehearsing,” says Lizzie. “I thought of the collection as "the bones of my new show..." so his choice was surprising to me, but I was intrigued. I just didn't really think anyone would ever hear my pantry songs beyond the kitchen when I first recorded them.”
The two have now started a collectibles focused record label, Because Of You Music - with the initial intention of starting their release schedule with a first printing of The Kitchen Demos.
So, Lizzie said yes and a great collaboration began … “… I said yes because I knew the angels had been in the room with me when I recorded them, and also, because, my heart tells me now, that my life - and my work - belong more and more to You, to me following the lead of my true fans - my "fam."
MORE ABOUT WEST:
Lizzie West is an accomplished singer-songwriter known for her unique blend of genres including folk, gospel, and alternative country-rock. She gained critical acclaim in the early 2000s, with her music featured in television shows like Dawson's Creek and films like Secretary. After a hiatus from commercial recording, West is making a triumphant return with new music, embracing her past work and building a new chapter in her musical journey. www.lizziewest.com, https://lizziewest.bandcamp.com/track/family-fourth
***
Lizzie West was born in Manhattan and moved to London at the age of 18 for a handful of formative years, then Chelsea, NYC - in 1996. It may be of some importance to mention a stop in Nashville where she purchased her first guitar. At some point soon after, she rolled into Brooklyn with the beat up black acoustic, busking on street corners and playing evening shows at her sister’s bar in Williamsburg starting around 1997.
In the months and years that followed, (1998-2001), Dusty Turnaround” was featured in HBO’s Rock The Boat and Lizzie would cross the country a few more times on the wings of her debut independent album Holy Road (first published in "musical book" form).
The title track, “Holy Road,” appeared in a television ad for IAM.com, directed by Spike Lee, in which a young Lizzie West performed her song, solo, in front of a rustic cabin. West was featured singing the song for the whole commercial, and also as a collage with other IAM.com members. The commercials were aired during the Academy Awards and the Super Bowl that year. The money West earned from the commercial and an IAM.com sponsorship, paid for her to put together her first tour in the Summer of 2000. During that trip she chronicled her story for them about her adventures, she and her filmmaker friend took the historic tip to “find Leonard Cohen."
By July 2000, Cohen welcomed Lizzie in, became a fan of Holy Road and guided her forward in the music business.
Lizzie’s movie about that trip is on the “fam” list of future releases that are safely stored in the artist's "lost materials" vault… for now it remains an undiscovered treasure in Lizzie's large collections of media she has created and collected from 1997-Present but there is talk of an upcoming documentary webcast/arthouse movie about West's Life, using "The Lost Materials" as a core piece of her story....and... Good to note, that she is still filling the vault daily with new materials from her current journey back to commercial recording and touring. Also, good to note that some of the film footage will be shared forthe first time when West hosts 3 Fall/Winter 2025 reunion events.
By 2002, trend of sync success followed with her songs “Chariots Rise,” appearing in the film Secretary, “Prayer,” (Alias, Third Watch) and “Doctor,” (Everwood). “Sometime,” the latter also featured on Dawson’s Creek,”
In 2003, Lizzie released Holy Road II, or Holy Road: Freedom Songs on Warner Bros. The album inspired Entertainment Weekly to elect her as Breakout Artist of the Year.
Jon Perales of the New York Times also gave her record due props saying, “West's music is folk-rock that can lean toward funk or country... Yet she already has her own perspective and her own presence: part seeker, part vamp with heavy-lidded eyes and casually swiveling hips.”
A live show at LA haunt The Mint, in support of the album, also inspired Los Angeles Times’ Natalie Nichols to proclaim, “The journey she shared was perhaps what anyone looking for freedom, love and self might experience, but she had a uniquely effortless, and charming, way of telling the tale.”
Lizzie West released 19 Miles to Baghdad independently at first, leaving Warner Bros. to be sure the song got out. It became peace anthem on Democracy Now!... A sophomore long player, I Pledge Allegiance to Myself, was released in 2006 on Appleseed Records. Lizzie West learned to stand up for her own song and her own place in the culture... HITS Magazine cheered her on, “This is a great album, full of surprises, and superb songwriting,” ...
By 2005, West hard begun her work as a community organizer, going underground, starting a touring cooperative in the middle of the country, seeding creative economy ecosystems , building an artist development company, writing musical fantasy works, and empowering students and artists in the Hudson Valley and Catskills..
Slant’s Jonathan Keefe to add, “‘I Pledge Allegiance to Myself’ confirms West’s status as a first-rate folk artist.”
*******
In the spirit of building a new chapter in her musical journey, Lizzie West’s, The Kitchen Demos, her seventh release and her fifth full length album, will be released on Because Of You Music, a boutique "collectibles" label this Fall.
***