Biography

Guitarist, singer, and songwriter Johnny Cooper was born in Phoenix, AZ in 1988, but his musical roots really began in Texas, where he spent his childhood after moving to the Lone Star state with his family in 1992. He showed an early interest in music and dance, and was playing the drums by his early teens. Switching to guitar on the advice of Witchita Falls promoter Woody Hodges of Sold Out Productions, Cooper soon came up with his own blend of the regional musical hybrid know as "red dirt," a Texas and Oklahoma-based concoction of Southern rock, country, and blues, and following a gig opening for the Great Divide in Witchita Falls in early 2004, he began a career as a working musician, playing in the clubs at night while still attending high school (where he also played on the tennis team and sang in the a cappella choir). Cooper began to write songs and started to refine his own sense of the red dirt genre, stretching it to include some pop, soul, and funk elements. Backed by the band A.A. Bottom (named in a sort of reverse homage to ZZ Top), later known as the Johnny Cooper Band (guitarist Ben Shaw, bassist Cody Shaw, keyboard player and guitarist Nick Ghanbari, and drummer Joe Cortez IV), he became a rising star on the red dirt scene, touring constantly through the Texas and Oklahoma region. His first album, Live at the Pub, was released in 2006, with a studio effort, Ignition, appearing in 2007. A third, Follow, was issued by Tenacity Records in 2009. With five years gigging in bars and clubs on the red dirt circuit under his belt, along with three albums and several forays onto the Texas music charts, Cooper was poised at the age of 21 to take his music to a wider national audience. ~ Steve Leggett, Rovi