With country singer Elizabeth Cook performing at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College on Veterans Day, the college’s Olin Arts Center Concert Hall is offering military veterans and currently enrolled military personnel two free tickets to the concert.

The offer is good while ticket supplies last. Please contact 207-786-6163 or olinarts@bates.edu to reserve tickets.

Praised for the honesty of her lyrics and her wide stylistic range, Cook performs at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Cook has toured worldwide and hosts a morning radio show, Elizabeth Cook’s Apron Strings, on Sirius XM’s Outlaw Country channel. She’s “an intriguing bunch of contradictions,” wrote a reviewer for Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

“She lives in Nashville, has the good looks of a country pin-up and has made regular performances on that legendary country show, the Grand Ole Opry. But she’s influenced by rock and punk as well as bluegrass and rockabilly, and many of her direct, no-nonsense songs are far too daring for the Opry.”

Born in rural Florida, Cook began singing and playing guitar early on. In 2002 she released her major label debut, Hey Y’All, on Warner Brothers. The record included the song “Dolly” in which Cook playfully seeks advice from country star Dolly Parton. Cook’s five studio albums also include This Side of the Moon (Hog Country, 2005) and the Rodney Crowell-produced Balls (31 Tigers, 2007).

Her most recent record, this year’s Welder (31 Tigers) has received glowing reviews. Many of the songs are inspired by family experiences, and the album title pays tribute to her father, a welder who learned to play bass in prison. The record was produced by Don Was (Rolling Stones, Kris Kristofferson), and features appearances by Dwight Yoakam, Crowell and Buddy Miller.

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Max Cleland, a Vietnam veteran and former U.S. senator from Georgia, discusses veterans’ issues and the impact the Bush administration has had on American military veterans in a speech at 5:30 p.m. today in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, Campus Avenue.

Cleland’s talk, sponsored by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Democrats, is open to the public at no cost.

“We need to improve dramatically [Veterans Adminstration] healthcare for all of our veterans instead of cutting the requested VA budget by $6.5 billion as President Bush has done,” Cleland, an outspoken critic of Bush administration policies, told an audience in Atlanta last June.

Since 2002, Cleland has served on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a body examining the facts behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and charged with making recommendations to prevent future acts of terrorism.

Cleland is a distinguished adjunct professor at American University’s Washington Semester Program and serves there as a fellow in the Center for Congressional & Presidential Studies. A former senator from Georgia, he began his public service as an officer in the U.S. Army, volunteering for duty in Vietnam in 1967, where he served until a grenade attack in April 1968 cost him both legs and his right arm.

After recuperating from his injuries, Cleland was elected to the Georgia State Senate. In 1975, when he was 34 years old, President Carter appointed him administrator of the Veteran’s Administration, where he instituted the revolutionary “Vets Center program,” which for the first time offered psychological counseling as well as physical care to combat veterans.

Cleland was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996, where he served as chairman of the Personnel Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee, and was a member of the Senate Veteran’s Affairs Committee. In the Senate, he earned enormous respect for his work in such areas as health care and education reform, bio-terrorism preparedness, homeland security and fiscal responsibility.

Cleland is the author of Strong at the Broken Places (Longstreet Press, 2000).