BEST BET: DANA COOPER
By Barry
Gilbert
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
October 27, 2005
At 7 p.m. Nov. 3, 2005, at Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Avenue. $8. 314-773-3363.
Kansas City-reared Dana Cooper
is another singer-songwriter who somehow has remained below the
mainstream music radar since he began performing in 1973. After
moving to Texas and spending five years as a duo with Shake
Russell and then five more in the rock band Dana Cooper's DC3, he
moved to Nashville and went solo, releasing several albums that
were critically well received. "Made of Mud" is
Cooper's latest CD, a work that includes songs from throughout
his career and a timely cover of Woody Guthrie's
outlaw-against-the-system classic, "Pretty Boy Floyd."
The music on "Mud" is rooted more in folk rock than
country rock, and the CD is topical without being political,
spiritual without being religious. In fact, tunes such as the
30-year-old Cooper-Russell song "Step Into the Light,"
"Sit This One Out," "Comic Tragedy" and
"World of Hurt" assail both fundamentalist religion and
politics, urging individual responsibility as a cure for the sad
state of the world. Cooper mixes in some beautiful love ballads
for a touching, thought-provoking and often-rocking CD.