Alice Peacock music

Lived-in. That's how Alice Peacock's new album feels. "When we were recording the strings, one of the musicians said to me, 'This record feels like an old shirt familiar and comfortable,'" she says.

Alice was deeply touched by the remark. In fact, she and producer Andrew Williams were striving to make a classic-sounding record. Warm as faded flannel, Who I Am recalls the golden age of singer-songwriter pop (the album's cover was even shot by legendary rock photographer Henry Diltz). It is impeccably crafted, but what's most affecting is how easy and organic it feels, how directly Alice's voice connects with the listener.

"We cut all the songs live. All my vocal performances are live," she says, explaining how she sat at the piano singing and playing along with the band as the tape rolled. "We didn't rehearse. Andrew just said, 'I like to save it for the record.'" This certainly kept the studio bill manageable - Who I Am was recorded in about two weeks, at Hollywood's Sound Factory - but more importantly, it captured an immediacy, created an intimacy, that would have been impossible if Alice had been "hands-free in front of the mic," as she puts it. "I had to keep it simple and accept that it wasn't going to be perfect. There's an authenticity to the performances that people have really responded to."

Moreover, the record unfolds naturally because it was sequenced according to how the songs best flowed into one another musically. Nevertheless, Alice says, "When we listened to it all the way through, we realized it takes you on an emotional journey. It starts out kind of dark, but by the end, it's really affirming. It's not just a collection of songs; listening to this record is a genuine album experience - there's a thread that binds these songs together." Though some of the material can be interpreted as traditional love songs, Alice is quick to iterate that the aforementioned thread is both more expansive and more basic. It's the very DNA of life experience: relationships. Relationships with lovers, yes, but also with friends and family and God and the universe and ourselves.

Alice confides that the album's title track speaks to that last one: "'Who I Am' is very much a song to myself. I wrote it during a difficult time, when I was having doubts about the direction I was going in. I was at a point in my career where I didn't feel particularly understood or appreciated. I did some soul- searching and realized, 'I know who I am. I don't need anyone's approval. I'm going to be okay.'" It was at this point that she packed up and said, "I'm going to go make my own record." Thus the lyric, "In the ways of life and art, I trust the wisdom of my heart." She's happy to say of the results: "This record truly expresses who I am as an artist. When I listen to it now, I can't help saying to myself, 'You tell 'em, sister!'"

Going it alone was something she knew she could do. After all, her first two records, 1999's Real Day and 2002's Alice Peacock, were both recorded independently. "There was no one looking over my shoulder when I made this record," she points out. "I made the record I wanted to make - how many artists can say that?"

There's a through-line there as well, stretching back to the summers Alice spent as part of a theater group. "I met all these artists, troubadours who played guitar and mandolin," she remembers. "Some of them were making their own CDs. I didn't know you could make your own record - that was a whole new concept for me. I look back at that now and realize it was a turning point. I started playing guitar and writing seriously. I wanted to say my own words, which I couldn't do in theater. I wanted to see what I had to say." She is still grateful for her theater training, however, crediting it with enabling her to give a poised performance of the National Anthem for 48,000 people at a 2005 White Sox playoff game in Chicago, which she's called home for many years.

Alice's original hometown is White Bear Lake, Minn., where she grew up swimming in the lake, manning her paper route and daring her friends to stand near the Indian burial ground next door. She was also an avid reader. "We didnt have a TV," she informs, "because my mother was convinced it would turn our brains to JELL-O, so I devoured books. I practically lived at the library. I never really traveled when I was a kid, but I could travel in books. Books allowed me to dream. I think that's partly why I became a writer."

It's also why she started the not-for-profit organization Rock for Reading, which, Alice says simply, "puts books in kids' hands." "To me, literacy is a basic human right, but one out of five Americans is functionally illiterate," she reports. "Rock for Reading raised nearly $100,000 this year for literacy and reading programs in Chicago [largely though benefit concerts featuring such high-profile performers as Lucinda Williams, Nickel Creek and Steve Winwood]. Some of the bravest people I know are adults who've admitted they can't read and are now learning how."

Reading began stoking Alice's creativity about the same time the family piano did. "I was a curious kid," she says, "and we had a piano in the house, so I figured out how to play it. I made up songs, little melodies." She admits that her early compositions were a way to get her parents' attention, no small feat in a family of six children. Genetic predisposition, too, likely played a role; Alice's maternal grandmother was a German cabaret composer and performer (her maternal grandfather was an actor, a member of Bertolt Brecht's Berliner Ensemble).

But as Alice grew older, she found in music an emotional refuge: "I would lay on the bed in my room listening to the radio or my older sister's records. The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Carole King, Carly Simon, Tom Waits - I would listen to their music and cry because somehow, they knew exactly what I was feeling. They made me feel like I was not alone."

She also found a masters class in that music. "I learned how to write songs through osmosis," she explains. "I learned about chord progressions and song structure from listening. The way I write today is just what sounds right to me." "Becoming a songwriter was a matter of necessity," she continues. "It's how I communicate. It's how I give what I have to give. It's just what I do - if I weren't making records and playing shows, I'd be home singing to my cats."