The Listening Room presents BettySoo & Michael Fracasso

About BettySoo: 

Raised outside Houston by first-generation Korean immigrant parents, educated at UT, she grew up listening to the Great American songbook and country radio.  Older sisters led her to the world of singer/songwriters, and nights spent at The Cactus Café and Hole In The Wall turned her on to the legacy of Texas song. 

Her 2007 solo disc, Little Tiny Secrets, garnered heavy regional airplay; 2009’s Heat Sin Water Sin produced by Gurf Morlix (Lucinda Williams, Ray Wylie Hubbard), provided building blocks to a national (and international) audience.  In 2014, When We’re Gone, co-produced with cellist Brian Standefer (Alejandro Escovedo, Terry Allen) placed her firmly in the first rank of songwriters working today. 

She’s won the requisite awards: New Folk at Kerrville, Songwriter of the Year at Big Top Chautauqua, The Dave Carter Songwriting Award at Sisters Folk Festival, Mountain Stage's New Song. 

She’s played the festivals – multiple South by Southwests, Kerrville, Calgary and more. And the radio shows – E-Town, Mountain Stage, WoodSongs, BBC 2 with Bob Harris. 

Her singing has been heard on Riverdale and Girl Boss, and her songs formed the musical backbone to Christine Hoang’s 2017 play A Girl Named Sue, singled out by Austin360.com in their review as “gorgeous, moving ballads comment(ing) on the themes of the scenes they punctuate.” 

About Michael Fracasso: 

Michael Fracasso is a singer-songwriter based in Austin, Texas. His music spans country and rock as he sings in a high tenor that evokes the "high lonesome" sound of early country.

He was a regular performer at the Cornelia Street Cafe's Monday night songwriter workshops in the early 1980s. He has released six albums/CDs in the past four decades. A Pocketful of Rain, Retrospective, Back To Oklahoma, World in a Drop Of Water, When I Lived in the Wild and Love & Trust.

As Of 2008 Was Touring with the Ribbon Of Highway, Endless Skyway.. Tribute to Woody Guthrie ensemble.

Indeed, Fracasso’s life today is transformed. He’s a proud father with a thriving cooking career that dovetails comfortably with his music including innovative combined cooking/singing performances. In 2013 he released a book, Artist in the Kitchen: A Brief Autobiography in Food, detailing this lifelong passion, and his late-night feasts, prepared after gigs for an exclusive coterie of musicians and pals, have entered Austin’s lore.