Let me introduce you to… The Coop-Miester … The Cooper Mini … The Coop Boop Be Doop … The other words that rhyme with Coop or Cooper …The one and only super duper SCOTT COOPER!
“Robots and monkeys are just about my favourite thing on this earth. Goddamn they make me laugh. Especially retro looking robots with accordion arms,” the Canadian singer-songwriter told me when I talked to him a while back. Oh, and since he is a musician, he sort of likes music too. He told me about a really extraordinary show he played recently: “It was the best thing I've ever done. Played with the full band in a 150-year-old church theater. No religious affiliations or anything, it was just stunningly beautiful and had the best natural reverb I've ever heard. The whole point was to do something totally different than the usual bar show. It was something for myself and serious music lovers.”
When Scott became a part of my world I was consumed by his song, "Tilt-A-Whirl," which I featured on Episode 11 of the Merry Andrews show. With his voice and Caroline Brooks’ swirling together in lyrics like, “You say I took your heart on a joy ride like an old Tilt-A-Whirl, I won’t waste anymore of your time, you’re a beautiful girl,” I was hooked like the Captain. “Caroline is a great friend with a breathtaking voice. She's in an amazing female roots trio called The Good Lovelies, everyone should check them out. When I started hanging out and singing with her, all I could think about was ‘I need to have her on my record.’ So I re-wrote 'Tilt-A-Whirl' to be this linear story song, with the payoff being the perspective flip from me to the woman I'm singing about. The song is about a few things … mostly recognizing and trying to break bad patterns and callousness with other people's hearts. It's a dark tune about self-involvement that turns into one of hope. Rather than rest on the pain and regret of a broken heart (or the guilt of breaking of someone's heart), this woman flips the switch, so to speak and instead turned those behaviors into something positive and changed a life. Hope that makes sense. Sorry if I've ruined any kind of meaning for you. Hahaha,” he said.
This article appears in Sep 2-8, 2009.