Biography

As a sickly child gasping for air in the polluted refinery town where she grew up, Bett Butler was often confined to her room, where she absorbed the music from her father's bizarre and eclectic record collection, the dark stories of Edgar Allen Poe, and the freakish fantasies of the Brothers Grimm, all of which made their way into her songwriting. After earning a degree in music from Trinity University and working for several years in professional theater, her musical journey has taken her from performing in tent revivals, rowdy roadhouses, upscale clubs, and jazz festivals to composing music for to silent movies, readers theater productions, and art openings. She sees the artist's role as that of a storyteller and finds songwriting an effective storytelling method because of music's ability to overcome limits of language. Short Stories, her first CD on independent co-op label Dragon Lady Records, earned a "recommended" rating from All Music Guide. Her latest release Myths & Fables was supported by a performance grant from the Artist Foundation and features “When Love Has Left the Room,” first-place winner out of over 10,000 entries in the Jazz Category of the 2006 International Songwriting Competition.