Peter Cooper @ The Truman Shows

Peter Cooper
The Tortilla Factory
Herndon, Va.
Sept. 14, 2008

I’d been waiting to see Peter Cooper perform since the first time I heard his debut disc, “Mission Door.” So when that chance finally came around, there was no way I was missing it. Even if the show was a Sunday matinee at a place called The Tortilla Factory. The name conjured a scary scenario: A constant din of clinking glasses, bar noise and kids who would rather run up and down the aisles than eat their refried beans.

As it turned out, there was nothing to worry about. The Tortilla Factory graciously allows Truman and Moya Parmele, the hosts of the “Truman Shows,” to stage house concerts in a room closed off from the rest of the establishment. The atmosphere, especially for a Mexican restaurant in a strip mall, was terrific. The small, bright, orange room contained about 25 people, who listened to the songs with rapt attention.

The show also marked a bit of a homecoming for Cooper, who attended Lake Braddock High School, not too far down the road in Burke, Va. On his one-time home turf or not, he performed with a confidence that belied his relative inexperience as a recording artist.

Of course, he’s not exactly a newcomer to the music business. Cooper’s day job (when he isn’t playing strip mall matinees, that is) is music journalism at The Tennessean in Nashville. He puts his reporter’s instincts and writing skills to good use, including details and turning phrases in ways that bring his songs to life.

“715 (For Hank Aaron),” which covered Aaron’s life and achievements as well as any sportswriter could, included a spoken recitation (which has evolved a bit since the recorded version) in which Cooper recalled as a child encountering a woman’s casually racist attitude toward Aaron during a conversation in a beauty salon.

“Thin Wild Mercury,” a co-write with Todd Snider about Phil Ochs’ famous ejection from Bob Dylan’s limousine for daring to offer honest criticism, conjured the chill Ochs must have felt when he was discarded, “like a red-eye photo in a garbage can / at the corner of Hero and Also-ran.” The song also contains one of my favorite lines from this year (or any other): “Poor Phil Ochs slipped through the cracks / Judas went electric and he never looked back.”

Cooper’s songs are compelling because he empathizes with the characters struggling on the margins. Sometimes they are relatively well-known, like Ochs and the late, great Townes Van Zandt (“Take Care”). Others are just regular guys, like the barfly narrator of “Sheboygan,” who chalks his serial drunkenness up to God’s predetermined destiny (“Everything according to the master’s plan / And I’m sittin’ in Sheboygan drunk again”). The mix of humor and pathos puts him alongside colleagues such as Snider, mentors such as Eric Taylor and obvious touchstones to his career such as Kris Kristofferson, John Prine and Lyle Lovett.

Cooper exhibited good taste in covers as well, playing Taylor’s “All the Way to Heaven” and the John Hiatt-penned “Train to Birmingham.” To my mild disappointment, he did not play the Taylor song that is the title track of his CD, “Mission Door.” He more than made up for the omission.

Cooper is an engaging storyteller, a skill that serves him well as a newspaper man but even better as a songwriter. Time after time he introduced his songs with brief to longish scene-setters, and then proceeded to provide more vivid colors with his lyrics.

In addition to fraternal spirit, it would appear that membership in the Sheboygan Elks Lodge 299 has provided Cooper with a rich source of material. Aside from “Sheboygan,” Cooper played the new composition “Elmer” recalled the old days of polka bars in Milwaukee, where they would dance the “polish hop.”

Alex McCollough provided Cooper’s only accompaniment on pedal steel, filling in admirably for steel-guitar titan Lloyd Green, who added a huge amount of character to the songs on “Mission Door.” The strong presence of the pedal steel added an element of traditional country to Cooper’s singer-songwriter material. It also helped make “Mission Door” an impressive debut. Cooper stood tall without Green, and gave every indication that his next collection could be just as strong.

“We were real happy to get Peter,” our gracious co-host, Truman, said to me after Cooper finished playing. “And I think he’s going places.”

Truman, you’re not alone.