"I was nursing a plate of french fries at my favorite barbeque dive last week when the guy at the end of the bar said "Hey - you're the girl at the crossroads!" I thought, Man, you don't know how right you are..."

Movie-goers across America were taken by the striking woman who caught Tom Hanks' eye in the final scene of the Zemeckis blockbuster Cast Away, and country music fans immediately recognized her as Lari White, million-selling artist and hit songwriter. But on the set that freezing May morning, Lari was facing a real-life crossroad far more challenging than her first movie role.

On her new album, Green Eyed Soul, Lari takes a radical left turn at those crossroads, away from the G-rated safety of her country-pop past, with songs that range from post-feminist ranting to the gospel message of love. It's sex, intimacy, and lost innocence. If you didn't know this is Lari White, you might not even recognize her...

"I was still nursing my second baby, running up and down the hill between my house and my recording studio, and facing another birthday thinking, 'Have you lost your freaking mind? You're going to leave the format that sold you a million records, make pop music in Nashville, Tennessee and start your own record label - Now?" More >

To make the record she wanted to make, Lari knew she needed time and freedom, two commodities often in short supply as a major label recording artist, so she built her own creative home, Skinny WhiteGirl Records. As exhilarating as it was frightening, Lari's move from big record label to her own company immediately lit a creative fire.

"Every time I wrote a new song for 'Green Eyed Soul' it felt like I had hooked up with an old, precious friend. And with no corporate conglomerate to answer to, no release schedule cue to rush into, and no particular retail bin to target, this subterranean river of creativity started pushing its way into the sunlight, carrying me along with it. I felt like I'd been let out of prison."

While promoting her new CD, Lari took time to explore her other passion, acting. She starred alongside Janine Turner, Brad Johnson, and Kate Jackson in the independent feature No Regrets. Previously, Lari appeared in Mulberry Street Productions' On Music Row, winner of the Nashville Independent Film Festival in 2000 and the CBS movie XXXs and OOOs. She also produced and performed the song "Power in the Blood" on the Grammy-winning soundtrack for Robert Duvall's film The Apostle. < Previous