by Dominick Cross
ARNAUDVILLE, La. — Of course he was driving his car when we talked.
Dana Cooper, singer/songwriter, was heading to Arnaudville from Nashville for his 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 6, 2022, show at NuNu’s Arts & Culture Collective, 1510 Bayou Courtableau Hwy.
Local talent and singer/songwriter in her own right, Renée Reed, opens the program.
On site will be a culinary pop-up by Five Mile Café. Tickets are $20; door opens 5:30 p.m. Music at 7:30 p.m.
Cooper also has an interview/performance prior to his NuNu’s gig, noon, Wednesday, on KRVS 88.7 FM on Cecil Doyle’s Medicine Ball Caravan.
Cooper is touring behind the release of “I Can Face The Truth,” his latest of 29 recordings since he started his music career in 1973.
“I was kind of reflecting on that, you know, my life and my own faults and choices I’ve made in life and stuff,” said Cooper. “The funny thing is, is the chorus, ‘I can face the truth, but please not today.’ Human nature, you know, how we kind of put it all off ’til later.
“It’s not always easy to face up to all that stuff.”
Cooper started on the CD before the COVID pandemic, “but it took a couple of years to work on it because of COVID,” he said. “I started a few months before and then I went out on the road.
“I was out on the road on the West Coast when COVID really hit us full force,” said Cooper. “And I came home, and then we’re all isolated for seven, eight months and then we went back in occasionally, Dave Coleman and I, worked together with our masks on and built what we could out of it until we could actually safely get people in there again.
“It was just a process, it took a while.”
Cooper and co-producer and multi-instrumentalis, Dave Coleman, enlisted songwriters, singers, and musicians from the US and Ireland for the CD. Collaborators in the studio include Tom Kimmel, Kim Richey, Jonell Mosser, Maura O’Connell, Brother Paul Brown, David Starr, Rebecca Folsom, and Gillian Tuite.
Like many singer/songwriters, Cooper is put in the Americana category. And, like his brethren, well, it is what it is.
“They kind of lump me in in with Americana, you know, but I really feel like I,” he paused, then continued. “As a songwriter, I’ve always kind of written all over the place.
“So I write things that are bluesy and country and folk and rock and pop and just whatever I want because I like all kinds of music,” said Cooper. “So I try to incorporate it all in what I’m doing.
“But, yeah, it’s Americana what I’m doing right now.”
When a song comes to Cooper it could be anytime, anywhere.
“I never know when they’re going to come. They show up pretty much unexpectedly when they happen, the ideas I get,” Cooper said. “It’s changed over the years. Pretty much everyday I come up with some kind of a rhythmic idea or a melody or a lyric and I’ll jot it down or hum it in in my recorder.
“I collect these ideas and then every week or so I kind of go back over what I’ve been coming up with and see if there’s anything worth pursuing,” he said. “Sometimes, I will just get an idea and I’ll have time to sit down and actually just start working on it right in the moment.
“That’s become rare these days. I’m busy doing so much traveling and ad man work on a computer and all, I don’t have as much creative time available as I would like.”
So, yeah, portable recording technology comes in handy for Cooper.
“I’ll get a lot of ideas on the road when I’m driving and that’s when I’ll just hum them or sing them into my recorder,” said Cooper. “And after gigs a lot of times, I’ll sit around for a while and play the guitar, come up with some ideas that way, too.
“But they can come from the guitar, from a music idea; they can be a rhythm idea,” he said. “That’s where most of my things start, from one or the other of those. And then I’ll start working on lyrics.”
While some of Cooper’s songs can comment on social or political issues, they’re not in your face tunes.
For instance, take the title song of his latest ‘Face the Truth’ release.
“That’s kind of reflective of the times we’re in, when it’s hard to know what the hell the truth is these days,” said Cooper. “That’s kind of one of the underlying themes in that song, without it really getting political or anything.”
Other songs, “Summer in America” and “Walls” said Cooper, are some of the more “topical songs” on the release.
“So, yeah, I tend to write about the things that concern me and I try to do it in a way that is not confrontational or divisive with people,” he said. “I like to maybe make people just kind of reconsider, sometimes, maybe their viewpoint.
“I try not to shove anything down people’s throat,” Cooper said. “I’ve found you don’t really get much anywhere that way.”
Cooper is rather familiar with Cajun music.
“Like I said earlier, I love all kinds of music and Cajun music has always fascinated me. I’ve listened to quite a bit of it,” he said. “I’m not any kind of an expert on it, but I do love it.
“I’ve leaned on that a little bit with some of my songwriting,” he said. “I’ve got a few things that were inspired by Cajun music.”
One of those songs is “Acadian Angel,” he wrote with Shake Russell.
“I’ll probably be playing a couple of those in my show,” he said. “Like I said, I’m kind of all over the place.”
Despite the the splash MTV made a splash on the music scene, Cooper keeps the music video in its place when it comes to songwriting.
“Not when I’m writing something usually. I mean it might occur to me that something might look cool some way visually,” he said. “But that’s usually after I’ve written a song and then I’ll consider what to do with it visually.”
Cooper said while most of his music vids are selfie videos, he calls on friends to help with the others, including “Bluebird,” which is on “I Can Face The Truth.”
“I’ll go out there and put it together the best I can,” he said of the selfies. “But I’ve worked with some friends, too, in Nashville. In ‘Bluebird’ (with Tom Kimmel), it was like, ‘Hey, this would be great, obviously, to have some aerial footage.’
So Cooper contacted friends in Texas who do just that and the Lone Star countryside, shot from above, is in the music video.
“I asked if they would contribute some stuff and gave them some ideas of what I was looking for,” said Cooper. “So they sent me a whole lot of aerial footage that I had to comb through and cull from.”
Cooper rarely tours with a band.
“I’ve been doing the solo thing for a while and economically and logistically, it’s just easier,” he said. “But I do occasionally. I’ll be playing in Nashville, I’m doing a show in May with a band there, some of the people who played on the album with me.”
And while on tour in Texas, “I’ll do a pick-up band down there sometimes because I know a lot of people there,” he said. “But it’s pretty much a solo show.”
“I Can Face The Truth” is charting on five radio charts. It ranked- #8 FAI Folk Chart Album, #8 Folk Chart Artist for February. It debuted on NACC Folk Chart at #17. Also on Alternative Country, Roots Music & Americana Charts.
“All these shows I’m doing right now are being billed as CD release shows,” he said. “I’ll do the songs off the new record, plus a collection of songs from my other 29 records.”
“I’ve been doing a lot for a long time,” said Cooper. “Some of (albums) were with other folks. I’ve played with a couple other people over the years, we put out records together. They weren’t all solo projects, but most of them are.”