By Carol Altmann

It was late November last year when a teenage singer-songwriter named Cooper Lower took to the stage at Blarney Books & Art, Port Fairy, knowing that most of the crowd had not come specifically to hear him – he was a support act to Irish folk artist Gallie.

Those – like me – who had not heard Cooper perform before perhaps expected what I did: a few cover songs belted out with the enthusiasm of a 17-year-old clutching a guitar.

What followed, however, was magical.

Cooper has a voice that is both powerful and gentle, lilting and strong and the intimate Blarney venue combined with Cooper’s songwriting talent, musical ability and stage presence was mesmerising.

[box]Subscribers: We have a copy of Cooper’s EP, ‘Just a Thought’ to give away. Email us at editor@bluestonemagazine.com.au with COOPER in the subject line by Friday Feb 19 at 5pm to be in the draw.[/box]

“Blarney Books put up a Facebook photo that night saying ‘Cooper Lower pouring his heart out on stage’ and that was the coolest thing to read because that is exactly what I try to do every time I perform, and to see that acknowledged really meant a lot to me,” he tells me later.

We are chatting at the dining room table in his family home in north Warrnambool, where he also writes and practices his material in his bedroom that houses a string of acoustic guitars – his favourite instrument.

“I got a guitar for my 8th birthday but I only picked it up and started playing it when I was 13,” Cooper, who is completely self-taught, says.

“I would play and sing along to songs and I started to think, ‘actually, I am okay at this.”

While initially inspired by the likes of rapper Eminem (“I have moved on since then,” he laughs), Cooper began to listen to singer-songwriters such as Jack Johnson, John Butler, Ed Sherrin and Xavier Rudd and found “they really had something to say with their songs”.

He wrote his first song – Utopian Nightmare (listen here) – in 2014, at the age of 15 after being inspired by an English school assignment on dystopian fiction.

“I had thought a lot about the theme for the assignment, so that song just fell out of me in two days….but they are not all like that! Deluded Eyes (listen here) took three months to write. Three months of thinking and working that is compacted into four minutes,” Cooper says.

As he talks about his work, it is easy to forget that Cooper is just 17, starting VCE (he studies at Mortlake College and is also enrolled in the Emmanuel College Cert 3 Music program), with a young girlfriend, and the loping, big-legged stride of a teenager.

On so many other levels Cooper is a wise head on young shoulders. A quietly spoken, polite and measured old soul in a young body, who thinks and writes very deeply about the world.

“I have very high expectations of my song writing. I will never settle for a word or a line unless I can explain why it is there,” he says.

For Cooper, the challenge is to find the right balance between the music and the meaning and to “reach” an audience by striking that balance.

“If you try to tell people how to think, they won’t want to listen, but if through my music I can tell them what I am thinking, then maybe it offers them a new perspective.”

Cooper’s five-track EP, Just a Thought, tackles such issues as depression, mental illness, hope, loss and love – some of it drawn from his own experience, but most from his own reflections. He is now writing more songs for a full album and taking his music to the people wherever he can, from busking in Warrnambool and Melbourne, to a string of gigs around the south-west.

People like Lynny Mast, who is passionate about promoting local musicians and has started a pop-up shop for local music, and fellow musicians Brady James and Tom Richardson have all inspired Cooper to keep following his dream, together with his mum, Michelle, who helps “carry in all the gear” to the gigs.

“Tom (Richardson) once said to me, ‘I know why we play music – you know why you do it –  and you just have to keep doing it.”

At the end of our engrossing conversation, Cooper realises he has missed the bus for a meeting at Flying Horse Inn. As I offer him a ride, I am reminded, again, that one of the most exciting young talents in Warrnambool right now is still not old enough to drive – but he is a certainly a person going places.

[box]You can keep up to date with Cooper Lower’s gigs via his Facebook page. He is also scheduled to perform at Blarney Books & Art during the Port Fairy Folk Festival. Film maker Colleen Hughson has created a series of beautiful clips of Cooper performing that you can watch here.  We also have a copy of Cooper’s EP, Just A Thought, to give away to one lucky Bluestone subscriber: email us with the subject line Cooper at editor@bluestonemagazine.com.au by Friday Feb 19 to be in the draw.[/box]

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Words and photos by Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] B[/dropcap]rendan Polak is no musician, in fact he admits he couldn’t play a note until he began to make instruments that are both simple and fascinating – cigar box guitars.

Cigar box and biscuit box guitars belong to a genre of instruments borne of poverty and portability – right up there with spoons and the harmonica – and are rooted in the blues music of America’s deep south. Some recordings of the cigar box guitar date back to the 1840s.

It was through this music that Brendan, of Warrnambool, became captivated by the unique guitars.

“I listen to a bit of blues and have always wanted to learn to play something, so I ended up buying a cigar box guitar online from the US,” he explains.

That was about three years ago and, in the time since, Brendan has not only got a fair handle on how to play a cigar box, but how to make one.

The guitar begins, of course, with an old cigar box and Brendan has found himself a ready supplier via Gumtree: a Melbourne cigar stockist who is happy to offload the empty boxes to somebody who can use them.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] T[/dropcap]he boxes are beautiful objects in themselves, with sweet-smelling wood or thick cardboard, tiny gold clasps and usually an intriguing decoration on the top and sides to make the recipient feel like they are enjoying a small luxury (if an ultimately unhealthy one!)

Brendan then adds his own touches – the acoustic guitar strings, the tuner pegs, and the neck, made from bits of recycled wood that could be anything from a broom handle to an off-cut from old wooden pallet. Some even have volume buttons.

“I really love the simplicity of them, yet each one is different,” Brendan says.

“The fact it has only one, two or three strings also makes it appealing to people who think they can’t play an instrument…like me,” he laughs.

Another intriguing element is the “pick up” – a small piece of electronic work that sits inside the guitar for use with an amplifier. Brendan shows me a pick-up hidden inside a vintage ‘Log Cabin‘ tobacco tin and I am beginning to think that these instruments are the ultimate in up-cycling.

There is one more surprise yet to come.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] B[/dropcap]rendan offers to play a few bars on his cigars – (that was a line just waiting to be written) – and slips something like a metal socket over one finger.

His hand slides up and down the neck of the guitar as he picks out a tune and suddenly his man cave, and it is a sensational man cave, is alive with the sound of the blues.

“That sounds okay, but then you can do this,” Brendan says, as he plugs an amp into the side of the cigar box and boom – the sound is phenomenal: loud and phenomenal.

Who would have thought that an old box, or biscuit tin, with some guitar strings, recycled wood and a ‘pick up’ could make such music? But it does.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] A[/dropcap]s it turns out, the multi-stringed cigar box guitars are actually the more complex members of the family.

“This one,” Brendan explains as he points to a single-string stretched on a piece of timber, “is called a diddley bow. They come from the days when people would stretch string along a verandah post, or down a broom handle, and use it to make music”.

Now that’s simplicity.

(Click on video below to see a cigar box guitar in blues action.)

[box]Brendan’s custom made guitars are available directly through him (darky99.bp@gmail.com or 0423 696 440) and now Dale Cleves Music, Warrnambool.[/box]

[button link=”http://the-terrier.com.au/subscribe-2/” type=”icon” icon=”heart” newwindow=”yes”]Bluestone needs at least 500 subscribers in 2015. If you wish to read great stories like this one, please click here to become one.[/button]

More great stories about local makers…

 

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Recycled timber shapes a new life

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