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Cooke WCLphoto:Tony Kukulich

Bio
Cooke has been playing bass since high school and has been in a variety of musical situations. He polished his skills with lessons on the double bass with George Vance and the electric bass with Karl McNeill. He also has learned invaluable skills from Gary Willis, Michael Manring and the Musicdojo course of study created by Adam Nitti, with specific courses by Mr. Nitti, Anthony Wellington, David Dyson and Norm Stockton. With this course of study, Cooke really started to develop his own sound.

Earlier in a college a workshop with the Paul Winter Consort got Cooke started in a new direction. An avid listener of everything from The Allman Bros., Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, Bill Evans and Miles Davis to Return to Forever and Weather Report in the early and mid-70s, Cooke knew these sounds would influence his music. During his last two years in college, Cooke played with well known vibraphonist Arthur Lipner in a jazz trio and was a founding member of Centerpeace, a local fusion band in Delaware.

In the 80s, with a family to support, he co-founded Home Cookin, a local wedding/party band that helped pay the bills and fill in the classic rock and Motown repertoire. As the 90s corporate world took hold of him for the next 10 years, Cooke's basses were nearly idle. Various stints with friends, as in The Trauma Unit and Fatfinger, kept Cooke playing original music.

After leaving the corporate world, Cooke re-approached his work with the bass. In addition to diligent study of the bass, Cooke engineered sound at The Point, a popular music café in Bryn Mawr, PA, where he met hundreds of musicians, gave solo bass performances and played in a jazz trio—The Harvey Boys—with his two sons.

A year later, 2003, found Cooke as the pulse of the tight rhythm section of Big Package, a 10-piece funk band playing in Delaware and Pennsylvania. In 2004 while mixing sound at The Point, Cooke met Kate Gaffney, an energetic young songwriter. Kate hired Cooke in 2005 to play in support of her debut CD release, “Highways.” Since then, Cooke has toured and recorded with the Kate Gaffney Band on the well-received, follow-up release, “The New Then.”

Cooke also experienced new musical challenges in a duo with veteran of the music business, Lili Añel. Her music combined a variety of styles to present a bass player's dreams—to accompany, solo, orchestrate and groove. His biggest challenge was to co-produce Lili's 3rd CD "Dream Again". In addition to recording and engineering the CD he played bass {fretted, fretless and upright bass} as well as piano, and arranged strings.

Occasionally you can find Cooke playing with Mark Oppenlander's eclectic "One Alternative" group which is comprised of oboe/english horn, two classical guitars, bass and drums. Cooke has joined the ranks of the fusion group 'füsiondump' with high school alumni Robert Sparre on keyboards. Joined by Dave Bozenhard on guitar, Vince Marinelli on sax and John Cassidy on drums the band plays some of the 'old time tested' Centrepeace repertoire and the great fusion tunes by Return to Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra and others.

Cooke joined the Darren Keith Band in late 2007. Darren is a fine writer/guitarist and well regarded drummer.

Updates

Ok, lots to talk about. füsionhouse is the new fusion band that has begun to get some buzz. Interestingly fusion music is once again new to a lot of audience members. Possibly due to the success of jam bands folks are really accustomed to instrumental music and fusion really shows the possibilities.

I am back sharing the bass gig in The Big Package Band. If you have never seen this band it is now time to check it out - 10 pieces, 5 horns, fantastic front man and smokin rhythm section.

Upcoming gigs (for complete list)

The Big Package Band
    Saturday July 19th, 2008
    The Chesapeake Inn
     Second St, Chesapeake City, MD 21915
    410.885.2040      7:00pm