Named as one of Amazon.com’s “Ten Best Emerging Artists’ CDs of 1999,” Alice Peacock’s debut “Real Day” blew onto the music scene with a fury of praise from music reviewers and executives alike.

“That sort of came by default,” says Peacock. “It was the frustration of trying to put a band together after college that never really worked out.”

And good thing it didn’t. Since its release, she has been embraced by many as a singer-songwriter and is making friends in high places. Peacock is collaborating with folk darling Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls for her next album, expected to be released late spring on a label yet to be announced.

Looking at her ancestors’ r‚sum‚s, it’s no surprise Peacock is destined for the performance spotlight.

Her grandfather was an actor in Germany, her grandmother was a cabaret composer in Berlin, her father was an actor in repertory theater in the ’60s and her mother acted in film and television.

“I think we’ve all got the gene,” Peacock says, although she equates much of it to growing up as one of six kids. “It probably started from a very basic need for attention.”

Her family did not own a television until she was in ninth grade. While her peers were watching “The Wizard of Oz” to elude the harshness of growing up, she turned to books and music.

“I had a Coca-Cola radio and I would put it under my pillow at night,” she says. “I just loved listening to the radio. It was sort of an escape for me.”

As a child, Peacock was often seen spooning her cereal while cradling a small transistor radio next to her ear so she wouldn’t disturb the rest of the family. Her father, not interested in hearing rock music at the breakfast table, nicknamed her “Radio-Free Alice.”

“I would keep [the volume] low and put it up by my ear,” Peacock says. “My dad said `You look like a refugee waiting for news, like you’re trying to escape some horrible regime.’ “

Peacock’s musical stylings fringe the border of alt-country and rock while borrowing from folk and bluegrass, providing an alternative to the domineering rule of teen pop and alternative rock over the radio airwaves.

“People like singer-songwriters because they want something real and something personal versus a manufactured song that doesn’t have a lot of emotion behind it,” she says.

Peacock’s simple melodies and sincere lyrics have provided her a personal outlet and escape her radio provided for her so many years ago. She may have been inspired to pursue this heart-on-sleeve method of performing from her father.

“My dad played guitar and made up silly songs,” she says. “He wrote a song about each of us when we were born. There was sort of a folk music tradition in that we were folks and making our own music.”

And now Peacock is carrying on the tradition which all began in her childhood home in the outskirts of St. Paul, Minn.