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The road can wear down even the strongest performer, but for Scott Cook, it actually gives him plenty of reasons to be optimistic.“If you were just looking at things through the lens of what you hear on the news or see on Facebook, you might not feel that way,” says the Edmonton-based singer-songwriter, motoring through Michigan with his partner and upright bass-playing bandmate Pamela Mae Johnson. “But when you’re actually out and talking to people you get a lot more sense of common ground between people.”Cook and Johnson have earned whatever positivity they’ve gathered in their travels, having toured through 35 states and seven provinces in 2022. While Cook admits the audiences who come out to folk shows tend to have a particular political bent, he’s also referring to many of the people who they’ve met at campgrounds, gas stations and restaurants. As he notes, when talking about some of the more conspiracy-minded folks they’ve met on their travels, the internet is not like a small town where you’re forced to run into the same people again and again.“In Northern Michigan, where my dad’s side of the family owns a hardware store, it’s very much Trump country,” he says. “My uncle’s certainly on board with all that, but my cousin who was working there is far more on the left. They all hang out together. Immigrants come in the store, and so do good old boys. There’s something to be said about how people learn to get along when they’ve got to see each other every day.”That’s the kind of close-to-the-ground wisdom you’ll get from Cook’s 2020 album, Tangle of Souls. Released into the void during the first summer of the pandemic, it avoids overt political pontification and instead investigates the soul, moving between heartbreak and hilarity. Like the rest of us, Cook was stuck at home during those early days, with little opportunity to show off his newest batch of songs to the public aside from a few yard shows.If you haven’t had a chance to hear those songs live, Cook and Johnson will be reuniting with their Edmonton band, The Second Chances, at the Northern Lights Folk Club Nov. 19 to play many of them. They may even have a few physical copies of the gorgeously-designed Tangle of Souls, which comes with a cloth-bound, 240-page book full of contemplations and road stories. Cook initially released 5,000 copies of the album, and he’s now about to order more; this may be the newest Scott Cook album you’ll be able to purchase in the foreseeable future.https://youtu.be/FxxjLu0TKF0 Read More
Source: EdmontonJournal
