lisa novak

Houston has yet to see what will come of Lisa Novak's effort to raise her status from a local favorite to national icon. Novak is in the studio working on her latest release while trying to capture the attention of label bigwigs who might be interested in her enticing blend of acoustic pop and alt-country. This is Novak's second straight year to take the award for Best Female Vocalist, but that shouldn't be surprising to the fans who have continued to join her at her regular gig at the Big Top every Tuesday. -- Dusti Rhodes - Houston Press

test - Maverick Magazine

Here in the nation's fourth largest city, we have a hard time keeping our genres separated ­ or even much caring about separating them. Unlike your first grade teacher, we don't mind our performers getting a little messy with their coloring, jagging out across the lines, one crayola color overlapping another, the occasional stroke that goes against the pattern. As long as it's good, nobody much cares to judge whether the coloring is "messy." Perfect conditions for Houstonian Lisa Novak's Perfect Mess.

At times sounding like the best of Mary Chapin Carpenter (just listen to "Cluttered Life" if you think I'm exaggerating!), at other times veering into jangly, your-best-friend folk rock, and even edging into adult pop with juicy, loaded lines like "were you out late again getting nowhere/tossin' around another Mr. Right," Novak mixes it up on Perfect Mess.

She has changed her musical approach slightly since she burst onto the Houston scene in 1995 as the vocalist/leader of Big Holiday. The band quickly became local crowd favorites and were voted Best Folk Rock band in the Houston Press poll that year. But this time out, Novak has added more beat, a bit more edge on the guitars, and occasional well placed touches of fiddle (Kristen Jensen) and mandolin (super "he's-everywhere" sideman Mark Zeus), widening her genre coverage enough so that she's even been getting a bit of airplay on Houston's KIKK, a country station, as well as on the always eclectic Americana-oriented KPFT.

With her dusky, knowing voice and hip, big-city lyrics, Novak's Perfect Mess never bores, never lets a listener fall off into a rut, never allows for any easy listening shortcuts. Backed again by her Big Holiday crew ­ guitarists Steve Greenwell and co-writer Vince Martin, bassist John Haddad, drummer James Stone, and pianist Ken Bujnoch -- Novak (like Chapin Carpenter or Lucinda Williams) comes across as smart, literate, highly aware, well traveled and well spoken, as someone who sees below the surface without much effort and can distill the messy complexities into pithy word-bites for those of us who need it simple and direct. Her slightly bitter, slightly judgmental, slightly resigned "Release Me" ("release me, modern life, release me") comes straight from the Big Girls School of songwriting.

Afraid to promise
You say it always put your back against the wall
So why don't you save all your comments
Until you think you've done it all
Is this what you thought it would be like

She also has a knack for projecting a sensuality in her lyrics and her vocal delivery. While she can keep it quiet and simple, she can also expand her production and her range and become quite powerful on tracks like "Never Will," which has a sort of a wistful Bruce Hornsby vibe.

Still searchin' for answers, your life's in disarray
You've been livin' like you're on some sort of big holiday
You've been living this way all your life
'Cause you say it gives you such a thrill
But come home, baby, come home now
If you haven't figured it out, you never will

No doubt there will be those who make an Indigo Girls or some kind of Lility Fair connection, given that Novak's songs are loaded with female/male situations that are filled with doubt and uncertainty and even distrust as often as they are with love and kisses and pretty valentines. Her heroines aren't dainty wallflowers or runway models, they are everyday women in the thick of the "cluttered life" Novak describes so eloquently. The title track is a twangy, rocking track with plenty of that wisdom garnered in the school of hard knocks. Maturity comes hard, but gaining maturity is the only way to see how things really are, how things are supposed to work. The storybook picture never fits the reality of relationships, but seeing past the storybook picture is the road to making a relationship work.

I always thought that I had to get it right
But I've learned to surrender to the night
When daylight turns to sunset it always makes me wonder
What happens next
But I'm sure of this, we are the perfect mess

There is hard-eyed, don't-blink realism in Novak's work (many co-written with Vince Martin) that puts her on a plane with the best songwriters around. Her no nonsense narrator in "Time of Day" has X-ray vision.

A plaything was all you wanted but the maintenance was high
So maybe you finally noticed that I've been here all the time
Those carefree prima donnas don't seem to be your type
And they're basing their performances on what they think you'll like
'Cause I see the kind you like, I'm not blind,
I've watched them throw themselves at you
And every day and every night I like the idea
I like the idea that I'm gonna get to prove

(chorus)
I can be, I can be, I can be like any of those things
I can be, I can be any of those kind
I can be, I can be, I can be like those other women
If you'll just give me the time of day

A 1998 winner of Billboard Magazine's songwriting - Rockzilla

Best Female Vocalist
Lisa Novak


Novak is another perennial club fave getting some just recognition after years in the trenches of obscurity. Despite her day job, she's maintained a long-standing Friday-night showcase at the Harp where her style -- soft alt-country mixed with savvy pop and jangly folk -- is a perfect fit. She augments this regular gig with shows at such diverse venues as Rudz, the Continental and most recently the Armadillo Palace. Novak -- a winner last year with sometimes singing partner Melinda Mones in the Folk/Acoustic category -- has as her specialty slightly jaded, I-see-through-you, almost-love songs. Her sophisticated writing has finally begun to get some attention from the ladies of Nashville. Novak always avoids the saccharin, and she's working on a new set of songs for an album to follow up her 2004 release, Tougher Skin. -- WMS

- Houston Press

Billboard Song of the Year in 1996
for "Make Believe"
- Billboard

Texan Lisa Novak certainly lives up to her latest album's Tougher Skin powerful collection of ten well crafted country-folk rock songs, that mark her as one of the most promising singer/songwriters to emerge on the Houston music scene over the past couple of years.
I can safely say that this is the best female cds that I've heard in the past twelve moonths. It's creative, not cliched"

Robert Mills
Maverick Magazine
February 2006 - Maverick Magazine