Artists:Peter Cooper

Peter Cooper is the same guy who writes about music for the Nashville Tennessean and who appears as a talking head on CNN, CMT, MSNBC, the BBC, the Biography Channel and other outlets. He’s also a touring singer-songwriter and instrumentalist who has played on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Late Show with David Letterman and Prairie Home Companion. His songs have been praised by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Mojo, No Depression, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal. Cooper has opened numerous tour dates for Todd Snider (and collaborated with Snider, singing harmonies, playing bass and co-writing a song on Snider’s brilliant "The Devil You Know" album) and worked in the studio with Emmylou Harris, Nanci Griffith, Lloyd Green, Ricky Skaggs and other luminaries. He recently produced Snider’s odds ’n’ sods album, Peace, Love and Anarchy. His own debut album is called Mission Door.

Luminaries of American song have been lining up of late, praising the debut album from an East Nashville singer-songwriter named Peter Cooper. The reasons for that are both simple – it sounds good – and complex. There’s something different about this thing.

“Peter Cooper looks at the world with an artist’s eye and a human heart and soul. His songs are the work of an original, creative imagination, alive with humor and heartbreak and irony and intelligence, with truth and beauty in the details. Deep stuff. And they get better every time you listen to them.” ~ Kris Kristofferson

Cooper was five-years-old when he first caught a Kristofferson show. That was on an outdoor stage in Charlotte, NC, not too far from Cooper’s hometown of Spartanburg, SC. Something about the experience must have stuck, as Kristofferson’s wordplay and folk-inspired melodies became a touchstone. From there, it was on to Tom T. Hall, Mickey Newbury, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Bobby Bare, Guy Clark, Eric Taylor and others who managed emotional literacy without ever seeming unduly literary. That’s a tough trick. Takes awhile to learn, and then you have to figure out how to make it into something other than... well, than that same old trick. Reverence and mimicry are close musical cousins that should not marry. Shouldn’t even snuggle, really.

“The enticing allure of Nashville is that there is always something new coming down the pike. Put this record on and you’ll hear footsteps." ~ Tom T. Hall

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Band Members

Depends, but band members can (and sometimes do) include

Lloyd Green

Jen Gunderman

Bill Lloyd

Paul Griffith

Pat McInerney

Dave Roe

Alex McCollough

Mark Horn