Back to Andy Plymale
		CD Review - Jami Cooper Reprinted from March 2006 Issue -by ANDY PLYMALE Say what you want about the Tri-Cities being a cultural wasteland, but it’s nice to drop into Bookwalter Winery on a Sunday afternoon or into Atomic Ale brewpub on a Monday night and hear someone as talented as young (about 21) singer/songwriter/guitarist Jami Cooper. The affable young woman, who can also be found taking coffee and soup orders, respectively, at Richland’s Fred Meyer Starbucks and at the popular Stone Soup Café in Richland’s Parkway district, has released a CD of material recorded last year in the studio of local musician and recording engineer Dan Myers. The Pages, flawlessly recorded by Myers, compiles a dozen Cooper originals, along with one cover song. Having heard enough of Cooper’s music to realize that she is a talented and original lyricist, I asked her to send me the lyrics to the songs, since the CD’s limited liner material didn’t include them, and I was amply rewarded. Cooper’s vibrato-rich voice and rhythmically solid guitar playing show promise, as do her composing skills, but it is her wordsmithing that I found most remarkable. While at times I wished that she would have stuck more to the metaphor at hand, she is great at making them, as in the case of Red Wine, where she longs to intoxicate her lover like the wine that he loves: “I wish I was the red wine allowed to course through your veins / that I could glow in your cheeks and intoxicate your brain...I wish I was the red wine that is staining your beautiful lips / that you pour out and swirl around lick off your fingertips.” Likewise, she evokes powerful imagery at times, as in the Joni Mitchellesque, For Good this Time: “I’m tired of waiting through the night / watching the walls for your headlights / looking for shadows by the street outside... So won’t you stay or stay away for good this time.” But Cooper is equally capable of expressing her emotions in authentic blues lyrics like these from Billiot Blues: “Ain’t nothing new for me to be alone in the night... ain’t nothing new for me to be alone / you can’t miss what you haven’t known.” As for her guitar playing, Cooper sounds best when playing contrapuntal bass lines, as on the Simon and Garfunkel-like, Mercy, the most hopeful of Cooper’s songs, or when strumming, as on the beautiful CD closer, Take What I Can Get, or the rocker, Your Perfect Love, which is perhaps the most interesting track instrumentally and harmonically. The one cover of the CD is the bluegrass/country oriented song Down Again (put another smile in my life), written by Cooper’s late cousin Rich Wilbur. This track left me wanting to hear more of this material, as I found Cooper’s fragile Allison Krauss style vocals to be chill producing. While I wished throughout that Cooper could have afforded to hire a rhythm section to flesh out the songs, The Pages documents a young talent worth watching—and catching live. For more information, visit Jami Cooper at www.myspace.com/jamicooper. Please see page 13 of this issue to read the Jami’s Artist Spotlight.