So when Liz Pharre was a kid, she thought she was going to be an artist, a visual artist, and she played and wrote music, but only on the side and only for her.
She ended up in Oberlin studying visual art and continuing to sort of, like, write and record her own music, but never really did anything with it and was incredibly stage frightened.
And when she got out, she was challenged by a friend who was in a band to create some tapes of her work.
So she set about doing that, and she made these tapes, gave them to another friend, who then sent them out to all of these different people and started a buzz that landed her with a record deal that eventually created a record that was released in 1993 called Exile in Guyville, which exploded onto the music scene.
Liz quickly found herself on stage of all sizes and being spotlighted on the COVID of Rolling Stone, and that launched her career in music.
That career has gone through so many different ups and downs and crazy twists.
Her life has changed in profound ways.
And as I sat here in the studio recording a conversation with her today, a lot of sort of moments, flashes, vignettes from that that really revealed the essence of who she is, are also shared in a beautiful new memoir called horror stories.
And we dive into some of that.
We dive into critical points along the journey and also the deeper drivers and values and beliefs and things that she wants to say and do and how she sees the world.
Really amazing, eye opening, powerful conversation.
So excited to share it with you.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is good life project in the early days for you.
Sounds like it started out in Ohio, Cincinnati area.
Yes.
And then Winnetka, beautiful suburb north of Chicago.
How old were you actually when you did the jump from Cincinnati to fourth grade?
Fourth grade.
Do you remember being.
Oh, yeah, I remember it very clearly because the year before that, we were back in Cincinnati, but before that we lived in England, which was the first real, like, whoa.