Dana Cooper

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Several songs on Made of Mud have a political tinge, including the first cover in Cooper's long career, Woody Guthrie's "Pretty Boy Floyd." Others, like "Four Laps around the World," are the kind of idealistic, Whitmanesque songs of experience that not many people are singing these days. Put all this together with his fifty-something voice — which sounds like that of a youthful coffeehouse strummer — and you have something that sounds suspiciously like wisdom, a rare enough commodity these days. The intimate block-party atmosphere of Nash Bash should be a good place to partake.

[Review published August 2008]