L.P.

Armed with a voice that weaves seamlessly between being fierce and vulnerable, L.P. - born Laura Pergolizzi - can captivate an audience with a single note, and turn a crowd of strangers into rabid fans with just one song. With alternately howling and forlorn rough-edged vocals delivering bracingly open lyrics, L.P. has invited comparisons to, Janis Joplin, Joan Jett, Gwen Stefani, Chrissie Hynde, and Amy Lee of Evanescence and worked with go-to rocker Linda Perry and Cracker’s David Lowery. She has inspired labels to engage in bitter rivalry (ultimately being signed to Island Records by L.A. Reid), joined an artist-friendly partnership with SoBe Entertainment (which will release her new album), and turned to the road as an escape and a refuge, slowly building a fiercely loyal fan base. On her third and forthcoming album, L.P. prepares to expand that fan base hardcore. Having spent four straight years almost exclusively on the road behind her first two albums, L.P. can work a crowd into a frenzy better than seasoned veterans of the business. In fact, her brash on-stage swagger is what helped her break out on her own. In the late 1990s, L.P. had moved to New York and became the frontperson for the band Lionfish. During one show, Cracker’s David Lowery was smitten by the singer’s talent and recruited her to sing on Cracker’s 1999 album “Gentleman’s Blues” and tour with them as a guest vocalist and featured performer. Eventually cultivating a reputation as a fierce solo performer, L.P. recorded her first solo album, 2001’s Heart-Shaped Scar (Koch Records), with Lowery at the helm, and took to the road for what would be four years touring the country in a van, seeing the country by highway, and “bringing the music to the people” every night. “I got hooked on the road,” L.P. said of the lengthy tour. “On tour, you feel like you have purpose.” Suburban Sprawl & Alcohol (featuring a collaboration with Linda Perry) followed in 2004, as did a return to the road and a trip to music conference South by Southwest in 2006, where major labels began a bidding war over the singer, culminating in her signing by L.A. Reid to Island Records. While L.P. says it’s “nice” that she inspired the competition, the singer ultimately walked away with her songs in hand, the material that will be included on her forthcoming album on SoBe Entertainment. Where will the road lead this time? “As they say, it’s all about the journey, the process. You can’t live for when something else happens,” she says. “I know I’m happy even if I play to a room of 50 people. Mostly, I just want to sing my ass off.” L.P.’s third album is due out on SoBe Entertainment in Spring 2009.