By Billy Bucher
Professional music can be a tough business. It is refreshing to find a musician as straight forward and gentle as Dana Cooper. No ego maniac here.
Dana comes from Independence, a suburb of Kansas City, where in 1967 he began songwriting, singing and playing his guitar in that area. Soon a fan named Princess introduced him to a left-handed guitarist and bass player singer/songwriter named Shake Russell. Shake and Dana formed a group that lasted until a Chicago-based group, The Ewing Street Times, came to town, where they first influenced the new group’s music, then took it apart when they headed to Austin, taking Shake with them as their bass player.
Solo again, Dana moved to the West Coast, touring Oregon and Northern California.
“It was there that I landed my first record deal for an album to be called “Dana Cooper,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “I became an artist for a Japanese division of Elektra where, after all this time, they are now reissuing it on the Warner Japanese label.”
As Dana’s fan base grew, he began making occasional trips to Houston where he eventually got back together with Shake to form the Shake Russell/Dana Cooper Band. With the help of radio station K101, the group really started to become very hot on the Houston market and soon were playing for sold out crowds. Their music fit perfectly at the time when audiences in the Montrose area were hungry for original material. They attracted some first class musicians. Jim Alderman, for instance, was a drummer who also played accordion and sang harmony and there was a guitarist named Jim Tiemann who had been in bands in Kansas City with Dana and Shake. Also playing was bassist Michael Mashkes who had played with Ewing Street. They recorded albums like “Coming Home” and “Island Nights” which was made in Port Aransas and an effort named “The Thrill of Love” with singer Jack Saunders included. The final year they played on “Austin City Limits” and got a contract with MCA.
The Shake Russell/Dana Cooper Band broke up in 1982 and since then Dana has made Nashville his home base for the past 26 years. He began by playing in two trios and also did solo performances.
“I just love to travel,” Dana said. “And I remember there was a time when I felt I was making my living always sleeping on someone else’s couch,” he added with a laugh. “Making fifty dollars one night, and a thousand dollars the next.
Last year Dana had the distinction of getting “The Musician of the Year” award from the Pilgrim Center for the Arts in Kansas City.
“And I really have loved all the cities I have lived in over the years. But I find a lot of people have misconceptions about Nashville. They think it is a terrible city to make a living but I’ve done all right there if I go on tour every so often to get away from it. I mean Houston could be rough, too, and I don’t know how the Montrose is now but I loved it back in the 80s. I still get a kick out of doing different things. I am always doing my songwriting but now I’ve joined a poet’s group. Writing poetry is, after all, really very different from songwriting.”
“In Minnesota I had a PBS concert and that, too, was a lot of fun. But at the same time, I have been in Nashville for 26 years now and it is home.”
“I’ve been very lucky lately to be working on an album with Kim Carnes of “Betty Davis Eyes” fame. She writes a lot, too and got a hit for Kenny Rogers on the song “Don’t Fall in Love with a Dreamer.” She will be on my next CD which will be called “Building a Human Being.”
Dana Cooper fans will be happy to know that he’ll be at “The Little Red Firehouse” in Edom on the 13th of December. It should be a fantastic show since they have a great setting to showcase Dana’s warm and intimate style. The venue, if you haven’t been there yet, is perfect for an acoustic show. They have an art gallery in the front of the building and, in the rear, is the performance stage. And since the music will begin at 7:00, it is just in time to stop at one of my favorite places, “The Shed” to get a bite to eat before the show.