Dana Cooper...

Last night the Live Oak Listening Room in Nacogdoches , Tx hosted Dana Cooper. Cooper is a classic singer songwriter type guy, originally from Independence, Mo. He relocated to Houston in the mid 70s where Cathy became a big fan seeing the Shake Russell/Dana Cooper band many times as a teen. I can count several times I have seen Dana in Houston, Doches, Austin and Camp Street Café in Crockett, Tx. 

He's a song singer/story teller in the fine disappearing art of the traveling musician who has always led a much ore interesting life than you have. I connected to one of the song stories of how as a 13 year old in Independence he once threw a cherry bomb on Harry Truman's front porch.  I have toured the Truman home, it's pretty modest. I've stood on that porch and seen the kitchen where Harry patched his own linoleum. Dana mentioned later in the show how at this time of his life he had managed to accumulate several hundred dollars in savings. At the time he threw the firecracker Harry was living on the pension of a WW I artillery man and it was not until 1966 that congress voted ex presidents a pension so at the time Harry probably had as much money as Dana does now. 

I don't know a lot about how the Live Oak came to be. A couple of friends invited us to this show I met the owner, Woody. It's the old Live Oak Baptist church and while most of the interior has been left just as it was the walls are hung with creations by local artists. 

Dana mentioned that he had 28 albums since his first release in 1970 that featured him backed by Los Angeles studio heavy weights Leland Sklar and Russ Kunkel.  

Great venue, good show.