Freezer Burn

Eli Westin lives in the Alaskan wilderness. Outside the mainstream, for more than thirty years she has traveled and worked throughout most of Alaska's vast regions. During the 70's she worked on crews at fish canneries and then construction sites on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. She lived in the Kotzebue Inuit native community in the Arctic near the Bearing Sea. When she got her pilots license she flew her 'bush' plane on skis to remote areas. A self described wanderer, she's explored some of the most isolated stretches of river that exist like the Kuskowim and Yukon Delta areas. In recent years, she built a house on an island in the lush coastal rainforest panhandle of the state. It is a two hour boat trip to the nearest community outpost. She lives alone and content, where otters and brown bears are frequent visitors. Despite living a subsistence lifestyle that demands long hours of activity, spring, summer, and fall, there is always the winter that allows for playing guitar and songwriting. A few trips 'outside' to exotic destinations like Jamaica, Tonga, and Samoa provided opportunities for her to play music with musicians from other cultures. Her childhood was influenced by the black community where she lived - the Lockwood Gardens housing projects of east Oakland CA. Motown and Stax records were on the radio day and night. Rhythm and blues artists of that time frequently attended house parties in east Oakland. Her father a sax and piano player, and her grandparents who sang regularly on the radio, worked the Detroit area before moving westward. They performed country, gospel, and the popular music of the day. All of these 'exposures' have found their way into this debut of original songs written and performed by Eli Westin.