Stories Between the Strings by Nate Cooper

He'd studied piano for many years as a child, but it never captured his full attention and he drifted away from music entirely for over 10 years. During that period, Nate slipped and fell into law school (it happens). During the summer before his final year in school, Nate bought his first guitar and began learning to play. Soon after, he fell in love with the instrument and with fingerstyle playing. Music slowly but steadily became the focus of Nate's life. He worked for 11 months, 15 days and 8 hours as a corporate attorney in order to pay down some debt, all the while studying guitar on his own and with a first teacher. Nate carried his guitar to work each day, practiced at any opportunity, and was one of few attorneys planning an exit from law before ever working as a lawyer.

Not long after Nate announced his resignation from his law firm, he struck up a conversation with another guitarist during the commute to work on BART (the Bay Area's subway system). Nate can't for the life of him remember this fellow's name, but he was a big guy - sort of bear-like and into Celtic music. The guy was also a software developer, if memory serves, and Nate would like to thank this mysterious, large guitarist, whoever and wherever he may be (you'll see why in a moment). Nate asked him for some names of possible players to study with and the names Peppino D'Agostino and Duck Baker came up among others. Not more than a couple of days later, an employee at Nate's law firm told him that her husband had studied with a great guitarist named . . . Peppino D'Agostino. She loaned Nate Peppino's "Venus over Venice" cd, and Nate knew immediately that he had to stalk Peppino and beg for lessons. The two connected and Peppino was kind enough to take Nate on as a student.

The two worked together for a time and then Peppino introduced Nate to . . . Duck Baker (the world of fingerstyle guitar is quite small). Nate studied with both of them for several years and drove himself to absorb as much as possible. Eventually, Nate began studying with other players - great San Francisco jazz player Jeff Massanari and young classical guitarist/composer phenom Gyan Riley. While these four guitarists inspired and helped Nate learn to play and compose music, artists such as Nick Drake and Greg Brown inspired Nate to write songs.

Nate's debut cd, Stories Between the Strings, represents the culmination of 7 1/2 years of work. While Nate wrote many unrecorded songs after picking up the guitar, the collection on this album consists of recently written songs and instrumentals that reflect and represent much of Nate's personality and style. Nate combines elements of Americana, Folk, Jazz and Classical music into his compositions for guitar. On top of and through this musical backbone, Nate adds lyrics and a singing style that have been compared to diverse artists such as Nick Drake and Randy Newman.

While Nate has always been an artist, he never suspected that he would end up wanting to be or becoming a professional musician. He had always expected to end up working as a visual artist or writer. Only by allowing himself to work hard and consistently at "catching up" with music, did the idea-then dream-then reality of music emerge. Though the surprise and joy of finding his passion for music also brought periods of disappointment over those lost musical years between piano and guitar, Nate is immeasurably grateful that music has now taken its proper place in his life.

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