Shervin Lainez
Expect some onstage collaboration between Liz Cooper & The Stampede (pictured here) and opening band The Go Rounds at the High Noon on March 13.
In an effort to be more conscious of her own creativity, Nashville-based musician Liz Cooper set out in 2017 to do something new and artistic every day. Rather than limiting herself to music, she dabbled in painting, drawing, photography — “anything immersive,” she says — and if she felt uncomfortable doing it, so much the better.
The practice stretched Cooper’s creative muscles and filled her well of inspiration for writing and recording her debut album, Window Flowers. It also helped that her band, The Stampede, had been testing many of the songs on the road for months ahead of going into the studio.
“After seeing how people reacted to the songs, which ones to record was a no-brainer,” she says. “It wasn’t one of those things where I was like, ‘We should make a record this year.’ It was more like, ‘We have these songs, and we should go into the studio because everything sounds really tight.’”
Cooper and bandmates Grant Prettyman (bass) and Ryan Usher (drums) tend to be on point when they play together. At first glance, The Stampede specializes in the sort of shuffling roots-rock you’d expect out of a group from Nashville, but they reveal themselves as nontraditional. Cooper isn’t afraid to drastically shake things up with outrageous psychedelic effects on her electric guitar or take a hard right turn, compositionally.
Being in a trio with a limited number of hands and feet, she started using effects and developing her fingerpicking technique in order to “fill things out,” she says. Touring as the lead guitarist for other bands helped her become an impressive soloist, as well. Again, it was all a matter of challenging herself.
“Collaborating with a bunch of different people and getting out of my comfort zone is definitely very important for me,” she says.
Liz Cooper & The Stampede is playing the High Noon Saloon on March 13. Cooper says concert-goers can expect some form of onstage collaboration between The Stampede and opening band The Go Rounds, a psych-tinged Americana band out of Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Cooper is originally from Maryland, but moved to Nashville eight years ago, before she was 21. She knew no one, and it took a while for her to feel that she belonged. She participated in songwriting circles “and anything else I could do to get involved,” she says. “Everybody plays guitar here, so I started working and meeting more and more people.”
She met Prettyman and Usher during that period, and soon their collaborations proved the most fruitful of all. The Stampede is already working on the follow-up recording to Window Flowers, experimenting with different sounds and working with new musicians, on top of touring nearly nonstop since August.
As exhausting as it is to be constantly traveling, Cooper finds creative nourishment in the sights and sounds of the road.
“It’s just a very different way of life,” she says. “You see so many different things and hear such different music, and I’ve been absorbing a lot from that.”