Music – Charlotte
Cooper Carter is best known as lead guitarist for some of Atlanta’s hottest singer-songwriters, but as a solo artist, he pairs a guitar-driven, energetic musical approach with a compositional and lyrical style informed by the singer-songwriters greats. His childhood was spent with heroes like Shawn Mullins, the Indigo Girls, and Matthew Sweet. By the age of twelve, he had developed a style informed both by these influences and by the guitar work of Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughan, David Gilmour, and Joe Bonamassa. In a summer program at Berklee College of Music in 2005, Cooper studied songwriting, advanced music theory, and rock guitar performance, developing a new appreciation for the techniques and styles of virtuoso guitar players like John Petrucci, Eric Johnson, and Greg Howe. His songwriting style therefore reflects a combined love of the guitar’s unique voice and that of carefully-penned lyrics and heartfelt vocal melodies.