Liz Cooper and The Stampede Play to a Sold-Out Crowd at Schubas
Photo: Steve Sym
In support of her stellar 2018 debut album, Window Flowers, Liz Cooper and The Stampede’s headline tour made it way through Chicago’s intimate music venue Schubas. Playing to a sold-out crowd, the band, Cooper vocals and guitar, Grant Prettyman bass and Ryan Usher drums, rolled through a rollicking set of tunes predominately from Flowers.
Recorded at Welcome to 1979 in Nashville with co-production from TJ Elias, Window Flowers is the culmination of a yearlong dedication in which Cooper pushed herself to spend every single day creating in at least one medium and saying “yes” to everything she was asked to do. Of the recording, Cooper reflects, “Our first time working with an outside producer and our first time in a proper recording studio was when we recorded Window Flowers. TJ Elias’ mad scientist ideas, an abundance of hot dogs, and lack of sunlight pushed us outside of our comfort zones to work more cohesively as a unit than we ever had before.”
Window Flowers is a collection of music that deals with the weight of mundanity, and politely tells it to fuck off. When listening to “Sleepyhead” you hear remembrances of her early Nashville recordings, mixed with the powerful assertion that this is Liz Cooper, a force that will continue to shape and mold her own course of creating music. Whether you see Liz Cooper & The Stampede in a dive bar or a theater venue, you feel like you are being transported to another time and place. People often remark that her music takes them back to the 60s and 70s, when rock-n-roll felt alive, and bigger than oneself.
