bounder cooper

The Cooper Brothers with Colin Linden, Colleen Searson and John Steele

Where: Centrepointe Theatre
When: Saturday, 8 p.m., $39.75

The Dream Didn’t Die for The Cooper Brothers, they only gave up on it for a while.

More than 25 years after Ottawa’s The Cooper Brothers quit the music business, the boys — Dick, the 59-year-old songwriter and his brother, singer Brian —have recorded a new album, In From the Cold, and are launching it with a big reunion concert at Centrepointe Theatre.

Produced by Colin Linden and featuring Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy, the album is getting a lot of attention. But Dick is still being cautious, and taking this reunion thing one day at a time. The savvy songwriter has seen how fickle the Canadian music business can be because he’s been there before.

“You hope your music will open doors for you, but it’s hard after you’ve dropped out of sight for 20 years,” says Dick, chuckling a little to himself.

Thirty years ago, The Cooper Brothers was one of the most successful Canadian bands of the seventies. Signed to Capricorn Records in the States, their first two albums, The Cooper Brothers and Pitfalls of the Ballroom, sold well thanks to three monster singles — Show Some Emotion, I’ll Know Her When I See Her, and the million-selling, Billboard chart-topping The Dream Never Dies.

That song title would become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy when Capricorn went bankrupt two weeks after releasing the Coopers’ second album.

By then, the boys were seriously burnt-out and wondering why their luck went south.

So in 1983, they quit. Didn’t even think about it. Dick had a successful writing career with a movie screenplay, a novel and dozens of video games. It wasn’t until 2006, when their greatest hits album was released, that the boys performed a live gig at their favourite watering hole, The Prescott.

“I didn’t think that anyone except a couple of old-timers and bar regulars like us would be there, but when we got to the bar, the line to get in to the bar went down Preston St. and all the way around the corner,” Cooper says. “That’s when I got nervous because we only knew four songs. We got lots of help from the audience that night. They seemed to remember the songs better than us.”

Opening for James Taylor at Bluesfest in 2008 made them hungry to perform again. Dick began writing songs for the first time in nearly 25 years.

“It’s a mystery how I wrote 25 songs in one year,” he says. “When I showed them to Colin, he said we should record them right away.”

Linden wanted the production to sound simple.

“He didn’t want us to get in the way of good songs. He liked their rootsy sound, so we kept the recording simple, stripped down to the bare bones. We’re really happy with the results. It sounds really authentic.”

Their first single is That’s What Makes Us Great.

“We weren’t overnight successes the first time around. It didn’t end on our terms the first time around. It would be nice to have one more kick at the can.”

The Cooper Brothers were hanging out backstage at Bluesfest’s main stage a couple of summers ago, schmoozing with James Taylor and Boz Scaggs, when something hit Dick Cooper.

“That’s when I got the bug again,” says the guitarist and songwriter, describing the moment he decided to plunge back into music. “It coincided with me leaving my day job. Just not working 9 to 5 anymore, I started writing songs.”

Until then, Dick and his brother Brian had been slowly getting back into playing live. In 2006, they released a greatest-hits album that included Rock ‘n’ Roll Cowboys and Dream Never Dies, and reassembled the band. The feel-good harmonies and inventive country-rock inspired fans to come out of the woodwork, reminiscing about the days, nearly 30 years ago, when the Coopers were considered Canada’s answer to the Eagles. In hometown Ottawa, they were rock stars.

Plenty of bands would be willing to milk this nostalgia factor indefinitely, but Dick Cooper got restless. Over a period of 18 months or so, he cranked out a couple of dozen songs, more than enough for an album.

Twelve of them are on Come In From The Cold, the band’s first new album since the early 1980s. Recorded in Nashville, produced by Colin Linden and featuring guest contributions by the likes of Jim Cuddy and Delbert McClinton, it’s a well-executed feast of roots rock that would fit on the table with bands like Blue Rodeo and The Band. The Cooper Brothers will celebrate its release on Feb. 27 with a concert at Centrepointe Theatre.

For Dick, it was the first time he was able to write without a label looking over his shoulder.

“We always had a record company dictating what we should do, the direction we should go. ‘Write more commercial, we need a hit record.’ With this one, there was none of that. It was just me in my backyard writing songs.”

As he began bringing new songs like Hard Luck Girl and Tear Down the Walls to the rest of the band, excitement built.

“We thought, ‘It’s good to have him back,’” says Brian Cooper, who plays bass and sings lead in the band. “He should have been doing that for the last 30 years, but life gets in the way and stuff happens.”

Topping the list of distractions was the need to make a living. Dick was a creative director and Brian got a job with the public service. Dick retired a few years back; Brian is still working. Both brothers are in their 50s.

These days the live configuration of the Cooper Brothers also includes three talented Ottawa musicians of a younger generation. With Tyler Kealey, Darwin Demers and Jeff Rogers in the group, the music never gets stale and rehearsals are fun. “It’s like taking your son to work every day,” says Dick.

While making music still has magic for the Coopers, wading back into the music business does not. The fickle industry was a big part of the reason the band members went their separate ways in the early 1980s.

“We had a few hard knocks with Capricorn and another label, and for some reason you kind of equate that with the music. But it’s not really the music, it’s the music business,” says Dick.

“You kind of get bitter about the whole thing. The reason we’re excited is the music. The music business still sucks. We’re not under any illusions about that, but at least at this stage we’re still excited about the music.”

Despite the challenges of the industry, one thing that may work in the band’s favour is the growing popularity of Americana radio stations. Found mostly in the United States, they specialize in a style of music that lands on the rootsy side of the spectrum, often with a twang and a singer-songwriter bent. It bodes well for the future that the Coopers sound more Americana than most Americans.

The Cooper Brothers
With: Colin Linden and Jonas
When: 8 p.m. Feb. 27
Where: Centrepointe Theatre
Tickets: $39.75 through Capital Tickets, www.capitaltickets.ca or 613-599-3267

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