Just five years ago, Liz Bowater was picking up a guitar for the first time. Already, she has three EPs and one full-length CD in her discography.

In high school, Bowater sang back-up for a band, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy her muse.

“I didn’t have a part in writing any of the songs,” she said. “I wanted to write songs so that I could find my own true voice.”
And so a couple of months after picking up the six-string, she began writing and performing her own material.

“I’ve written a lot of really terrible songs,” she said of the process, “but I’ve become more and more satisfied with what I’ve written in the last year or two.”

She’s also kept a steady pace of recording and releasing her material, even if it’s in short-form EPs, so that the freshest material is available for those interested.

“It’s important to keep putting out new things,” she said, “At this stage, that seems better than spending a year working on something in the studio and then not be doing those songs anymore when I play.”

Bowater’s latest EP, “Last Confession,” ventures even deeper into what she calls “the unveiling” of the human heart and soul and “our need and desire for, ultimately, redemption.”

A native of the Chicago area, Bowater recently relocated to Cincinnati, where she’s found fewer places to ply her craft, but an excellent support system of fellow musicians and singer/songwriters.

“Chicago is saturated and performers are a dime a dozen,” she said. “As soon as I got here, it was easy to establish myself, to break into the scene, but I don’t know that Cincinnati has as much to offer.”