Local musician Devin Cooper has spent more than half his life playing music.
The 16-year-old Innisfail Jr./Sr. High School student started playing guitar at the age of seven. He then taught himself to play drums. Now, after just a few days in a recording studio, he hopes to make a splash with a new independently-produced EP and some airtime on an area radio station.
Basement Blues is a six-track EP that Cooper recorded in a Calgary studio for which he wrote all the music and played all the instruments.
Cooper spent three 10-hour days in the recording studio in April. It meant recording all the drum tracks on the first day, all the guitar tracks the second day before finishing up with vocals, bass guitar and add-ins on the third day.
“There was definitely a tight time limit because we had to do it in three days,” Cooper said of the recording process, adding that it was a lot of hard work.
His producer took the rest of the week to do the mixing, mastering and editing. After making some adjustments, the final edit was ready by the end of that month. The artwork, layout and design for the cover was then created before everything was shipped out to Vancouver for production. He received 500 copies of the finished product on June 4.
Cooper describes his music as “bluesy-rock” that's influenced by the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton and AC/DC's Angus Young. Posters of Aerosmith of Joe Satriani hang on the wall in a jam space in the basement of his home in Innisfail.
“It's got some classic rock aspects as well as some traditional blues stuff,” Cooper said of his style of music.
People will get the chance to listen to Cooper's music over the airwaves this weekend when his song “You Don't Care,” the fifth track on Basement Blues, will be featured on 106.7 The Drive FM's Alberta Indie Spotlight. He will also be interviewed for the radio show.
“I was super happy. I was honoured to be asked to go on there. It's not every day that you get to be put on the radio. That's pretty cool. It (the EP) just came out a few weeks ago,” Cooper said.
His music will be aired on The Drive on Saturday, June 29 at about 6 p.m. and then again on Sunday, June 30 at about 11 a.m.
The Drive's Alberta Indie Spotlight gives local up-and-coming musicians the chance to expose their music to the masses, something the radio station sees as important.
“Obviously, cracking radio playlists can be a pretty difficult thing so we wanted to create a spot that we had available to them,” said Peter Michaels, program director for The Drive FM.
Michaels said he was impressed by the fact that Cooper wrote all his own music and played all the instruments on his EP. He described Cooper's music as “very cool.”
“It's got an old-school blues kind of feel and it's just incredible that he did it pretty well all himself. I think that's one of the things that kind of impressed me the most and made me realize that he was worth paying attention to,” Michaels said.
People will also get the chance to listen to Cooper's music on July 13 when he'll play an acoustic set in downtown Innisfail at Tom Lindl Guitar and Entertainment, beginning at 2 p.m.
Cooper said it's every musician's dream to make it big in the industry, but he's just happy to be making music.
“Everyone has a dream of becoming famous, but I'm not going to drop everything that I'm doing now just to pursue that 100 per cent. If it takes me somewhere I'll go with it. If it doesn't, that's alright. I still enjoy doing it, but if the opportunity arises for me to make a break or something like that I'll definitely take it.”
Now, he said his main concern is just getting his music out there and covering the costs of production.
Cooper is selling his EP for a minimum donation of $10. He said he has so far sold about 150 copies out of 500 produced. He said he can just order more if needed. His music is also available for purchase through iTunes.
