The song Trapper Schoepp co-wrote with Bob Dylan gets the most attention on Schoepp’s new album. Still, it’s likely Dylan would smile while listening to all 11 tracks of Primetime Illusion, the 28-year-old Milwaukeean’s fourth and most bountiful rock album yet.
Recorded during a compact 10 days in Wauwatosa, the project was produced by Wilco’s Pat Sansone, who also played on a few numbers, including piano on the sardonic “Drive Through Divorce,” a song that showcases Schoepp’s ability to redress pain as beauty. Even though he’s still so young, in many ways Schoepp has lived it.
Schoepp has dealt with chronic pain since he was 14. Injuries caused by BMX bike crashes led to spinal decompression surgery when he was 21. His mother signed him up for guitar lessons to fill the hours while he recuperated in her living room. “I heard Dylan’s ‘Hurricane’ in a movie while resting on my parents’ red-checkered couch, and my whole life took a different direction,” says Schoepp.
He and his brother Tanner formed Trapper Schoepp and the Shades, a group that released its first record in 2012. The youngsters caught the attention of the Old 97’s, the Jayhawks and Soul Asylum. This spring, Schoepp will play opening sets for Shovels and Rope. Before that, Madison fans will have a chance to see Schoepp perform Primetime Illusion cuts live on Feb.18 at the High Noon Saloon.
Though Schoepp has artistic and actual connections to Dylan, his music more readily brings to mind Rhett Miller of the Old 97’s. His cracked worldview is reckless, hopeful, vulnerable and — at times — goofy.
Primetime Illusion’s “TV Shows” is propelled by the good, bad and ugly guitar sound of a 1960s spaghetti western. “If All My Nines Were X’s,” which rolls along on an AC/DC guitar riff, is Schoepp’s optimistic view of life as a bowling score sheet — where being just one pin away from a strike is as good as knocking them all down. If only in one’s own mind.
There’s nothing goofy about “What You Do to Her,” wherein Schoepp holds men accountable for their bullshit in the #MeToo era. Folk rocker Nicole Atkins sings on this track, a get that Schoepp says is a fortunate byproduct of his relationship with Sansone.
There’s really only one miss on the album: “Freight Train” is a rock song that never pulls into the station.
As for Schoepp’s co-write with Bob Dylan, well, Dylan started to compose “Wisconsin” in 1961 on the day that he entered Columbia Studios in New York to begin work on his debut album. Schoepp read a story in Rolling Stone about the handwritten lyrics sheet that was about to go on the auction block in New York in March 2017, with a first verse that goes like this:
“Wisconson [sic] is the dairy state.
I guess you all know well.
I was in Wow Wow Toaster there.
The truth to you I’ll tell.”
Not yet Nobel Prize quality, but a Dylan ditty nonetheless.
Schoepp fleshed out pieces of the lyrics and married the words to an original, supper club-like waltz. He re-dubbed it “On Wisconsin.” His manager sent the finished song to Dylan’s attorney thinking that would be that. Several months later, to Schoepp’s utter astonishment, Dylan and his attorney signed off on the co-write. The song is an ultimate ode to Schoepp’s musical hero and the fitting, final track on a shiny new album.
