The Whitehawk Arts Council will feature Lisa Brokop as the first concert in the set of three Stars for Saskatchewan series. Brokop is scheduled to take the stage in Preeceville on October 27.
Lisa Brokopwas born June 6, 1973 in Surrey, British Columbia, said her website. She is a Canadian country music singer/songwriter and actress.
Active since 1990 in the country music field, she has released a total of seven studio albums, and has charted more than 20 singles on the country music charts in her native Canada. Several of these singles have also crossed over to the American country music charts, although she has not entered the Top 40 in the U.S., with her highest charting songs being "Give Me a Ring Sometime"  and "Take That" both peaking at No. 52 in 1994. Her highest chart single is the No. 8 "Better Off Broken" from 1999 in Canada.
By age seven, Brokop was performing on stage with her accordion-playing mother, performing polkas and numerous country music songs. When Brokop was 12 years old she began sitting in with bands throughout Vancouver and joined a touring band when she was 15.
In 1990, when Brokop was only 17 years old, she issued her debut single Daddy, Sing to Me. The song managed to reach the top 10 of the Canadian RPM Country Tracks chart. Her debut album, My Love, was issued the following year on the independent Libre Records label.
In June 1991, Brokop graduated from the Princess Margaret Secondary School in her hometown of Surrey. She then proceeded to move south to Nashville, Tennessee to further her country music career.
In 1992, Brokop began performing in local clubs and caught the attention of The Nashville Network. The network began to play Brokop's video for her single Time to Come Back Home and had her as a guest on The Ralph Emery Show. The appearance on The Ralph Emery Show and a 30-minute showcase at a local club got Brokop a record deal with Patriot Records, a label owned by Liberty Records. Before Brokop began recording her second album, she starred in the 1994 film Harmony Cats where she played a country singer who leaves home in search of a big break in Nashville. Brokop contributed to the movie's soundtrack and her cover of Tammy Winnette's 1968 number one hit Stand By Your Man was issued as a single, peaking at No. 88 on the Canadian RPM Country Tracks chart.
The first single of Brokop's second album, Give Me a Ring Sometime, was issued in June 1994. The single cracked the top 20 in Canada, but only reached No. 52 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles and Tracks Chart. Nevertheless, her first major label album Every Little Girl's Dream was released in September 1994. While Give Me a Ring Sometime was charting, many Canadian radio stations refused to play Brokop's music after the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission ruled that Give Me a Ring Sometime did not have a sufficient amount of Canadian content in the song. Nevertheless, Brokop's album went on to produce two more top 40 singles in Canada with Take That and One of Those Nights. By 1995, the album had been certified Gold by the CRIA, for sales of 50,000 copies.
Also in 1995, Brokop, along with fellow singers Victoria Shaw and Chely Wright, received a nomination for Top New Female Vocalist at the Academy of Country Music awards, but she lost to Chely Wright.
In 1995, Patriot Records had been shut down and Brokop was transferred to Capitol Nashville and issued her third album Lisa Brokop the following year. None of the album's first two singles reached the top 40 in Canada or the United States and the album's third West of Crazy did not chart at all. The failure of the album left Brokop burned out and she then ended her relationship with Capitol to take time off to focus on songwriting.
In 1998, Brokop signed with the Nashville division of Columbia Records, where she released the single How Do I Let Go. The song reached the top 20 of the RPM Country Tracks chart and received a nomination for SOCAN Song of the Year at the Canadian Country Music Association awards that year. Her album, When You Get to Be You, was released in July 1998 in Canada and produced five more singles including the No. 21-peaking What's Not to Love and Better Off Broken, the latter becoming Brokop's highest-charting single, peaking at No. 8 on the Canadian RPM Country Tracks chart in 1999. The album was scheduled for release in the United States in 1998, but was not released due to the poor performance of the album's four American singles and Brokop departed Columbia by the end of 1999.
