Review: Peter Cooper’s “Opening Day”

by Paul T. Mueller

The release of a new Peter Cooper album is an occasion for much joy and a little sadness. Joy because Cooper is an accomplished songwriter and performer who can write and sing about just about anything and make it all sound great. Sadness because, as good as he is, he may not be reaching as wide an audience as he deserves.

For now, let’s focus on the joy. Opening Day, Cooper’s third solo album, is another fine collection, and its 11 tracks, nine of them well-crafted originals, cover a lot of ground, with excellent musicianship throughout. The opener, “Much Better Now,” starts with Cooper reciting, with characteristic humor, a litany of past unhappiness before declaring that he’s “much better now.” In the title track, he uses baseball as a metaphor for life – not exactly a novel idea, but Cooper does it with style. “We’re tied for first with the whole summer left to play,” he sings. “Keep the aftermath and the epitaph, give me opening day.”

There’s more autobiographical material here. “Distraction” is a kind of plea for focus amid the many things competing for his attention – which might be expected from a guy who, in addition to being a songwriter and performer, is also a music journalist, a college professor, a radio DJ and a few other things. In “Part Time,” he takes stock of his music career and concludes, “That’s hard work even for a man in his prime, so I’m thinking about going part time.” It’s a little hard to believe he really means it.

When Cooper sings about other people, they tend to be interesting as well. The title characters of “Jenny Died at 25” and “Grandma’s Tattoo” both start out as young women, but the decisions they make land them in very different places down the line. Without giving away too much, it must be said that Grandma’s story is the more entertaining of the two.

Current events show up in “Quiet Little War,” the story of a military drone operator for whom warfare is an 8-to-5 job and the workplace is half a world from the battlefield. The album closes with a nice cover of Bill Morrissey’s “Birches,” a quiet, bittersweet story about life and love and time and compromise.

Besides accompanying himself on guitar, Cooper did a nice job as producer, assembling a talented supporting cast that includes Lloyd Green on pedal steel, Richard Bennett on guitar, Jen Gunderman on keyboards, and Dave Jacques, David Roe and Mark Fain on bass. Paul Griffith and Pat McInerney handle the drumming, while Kieran Kane contributes mandolin and percussion. Backing vocalists include Julie Lee, Thomm Jutz and Eric Brace (Cooper’s partner on three duo albums and also the head of Red Beet Records, which released Opening Day).

In the crowded musical marketplace, it would be easy to overlook an album like this one. But to paraphrase a line from one of Opening Day’s songs, that would be a shame and a crime.

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