Hi, VoxTalk readers! Here’s your Roots ‘N’ Blues ‘N’ BBQ Saturday noon update.

Walking through the gates at 8th and Elm streets, the smell of barbeque and beer is easy to detect. Peace Park is filled with tents, chairs and performing artists, but most attention is on the Missouri Lottery Stage, where country singer-songwriter Elizabeth Cook is just starting.

From the way she has to use kleenex and pop what appear to be cough drops, you can tell she’s got a bit of a cold, but that’s only if you’re standing close enough to notice. Her Kristen-Chenoweth-plus-country-twang voice hits every note every time. Flanked by a bass fiddler and an electric guitar player, Cook hit two of her hits right out of the gate: “Sometimes It Takes Balls to Be a Woman” and “Rock n Roll Man.”

She also requested we have our own Farm Aid, a fundraiser music festival happening today in Hershey, Penn., when she began playing her cover “Blackland Farmer” by Frankie Miller. It was a way to give thanks for the simple things, she says. Another cover she performed was Graham Parsons’ “Hot Burrito #1.”

The greatest part of Elizabeth Cook, however, is her sense of humor. One of the first things she says is how much she loves the term “CoMo,” because of its abbreviation. “You’re a pretty educated town,” she goes on to say, explaining that she got a degree from Georgia Southern University but her true major was partying. After a few songs she points out the hula hoop dancers in the middle of the park and says, “They’re probably calculus majors.”

Her introductions to her songs were both enlightening and fun. Before starting up “Yes to Booty,” she announced she smelled bacon wafting through the air. She went on to say that it was a song about drunk sex and that it being Saturday, who knew? “It might happen to some of you tonight.” Some of the parents with little kids decided that was their cue to duck out, but the majority of audience members, clad in everything from cowboy boots and hats to skinny jeans and Toms, stuck around to hear her change up the lyrics with “bacon.”

Cook stuck around for almost an hour and a half, a feat for any performer when faced with wind (“I feel like I’m the guy on the weather channel! The storm’s blowing in!” she exclaimed) and a cold, but the energy didn’t die. The periphery of the crowd shifted in and out, but the majority of people stuck around to watch the tiny blonde finish her set with both passion and humor.