Grey DeLisle

Multi-talented singer/songwriter, actor, autoharpist, and comedian Grey DeLisle was born August 24, 1973, outside of Monterey in Fort Ord, CA. Her mother was a singer and musician while her father was a truck driver who loved country music, giving the young DeLisle the pedigree that would shape her professional career (she is rumored to have written her first song by the time she was five years old). Her parents eventually divorced, however, and DeLisle’s mother, after struggling with drug addiction and alcoholism, became a born-again Pentecostal, and her strict ban on secular music in the home drove DeLisle to seek solace from her grandmother, Eva Flores Ruth, a vocalist who had performed with salsa great Tito Puente. DeLisle moved to Los Angeles while still in her teens, where she began working a little in theater, even trying a standup comedy routine, where her natural ability to do voice impressions came to the fore. Soon she was picking up voice acting jobs, and her personal “voiceography” is a lengthy one, including roles in The Fairly OddParents, The Powerpuff Girls, Rugrats, Grim & Evil, Dexter’s Laboratory, and many other animated movies and shows. She never gave up on her music, though, and was a member of the all-girl cowpunk band Side Saddle in the late ’90s. She formed her own independent label, Hummin’bird Records, and released three albums, The Small Time in 2000, the live set Bootlegger, Vol. 1 in 2003, and Homewrecker in 2004. Gradually she developed a sparse, literate neo-Appalachian style, which sounded a bit like a weary and goth-haunted Dolly Parton, and it led to her signing with Sugar Hill Records, which released Graceful Ghost in 2004 and Iron Flowers in 2005. She married guitarist Murry Hammond (a member of the band Old 97's) in 2002, and their courtship and wedding were featured on an episode of The Learning Channel series A Wedding Story. ~ Steve Leggett