Valerie C. Wisecracker

Val Wisecracker knows plenty about tunecraft, and she'll share it at the songwriters' showcase series at the Wallflower Gallery (a three-time New Times "Best of Miami" winner). Val, whose real last name is Caracappa, uses the pseudonym because Caracappa is difficult for journalists and radio announcers to spell and pronounce. Once a star of the hilarious radio show Pandemonium, she won first place in the Old Time Singing Competition at the Florida Old Times Music Championship. "I don't enter songwriting contests, because I don't think songwriting is a competitive sport," she says. "The kind of music I do is not the kind that's gonna win a songwriting contest anyway." (Apparently singing contests are another story.) Besides the top-flight vocals, she plays a mean guitar and a meaner banjo. (Not sure why the instruments are so mean; Val herself is as nice as could be.) She's also "the number one Americana artist in Florida," says Pete Gallagher, a DJ at WMNF in Tampa. "Her live show is so good it should be examined as a course of study at any major university. As a songwriter of real Florida folk songs, few alive can compete with her." Wow, Pete, tell us how you really feel. Her radio-show humor carries over into her music with songs such as "The Dirty Little Rat That Ate Orlando" and "Bin Laden's Got a Small One." The Wallflower and other venues are lucky to have her, because she believes that promoters hype lame gigs with the line, "It's great exposure." Her response: "Yeah, well, people die from exposure."