New album "Bluebird Days" is now available

GRAND BLANC, MICHIGAN - The follow-up to 2018's Missing The Boat is out in web music services as of June 21st, 2020.  It has garnered praise from my innermost circle already, it features no guest stars, and already a few of the songs with videos have recieved play on YouTube.  

This is a true solo effort, with me doing all the work alone at home to make this album exist.  My loyal audience should not be disappointed, as this, like many before, is an album that includes the same great quality of songwriting and the same acoustic lo-fi sound they've come to expect.

As is always the case with any album, I’m excited once again to announce the release of my latest, Bluebird Days. It’s the 9^th official studio album I’ve released since 2004, so it marks 16 years of me releasing albums on my pretend record label Scott Cooley Records.  I wrote my first song in about 1990, so this year marks 30 years of songwriting, one of my favorite hobbies.  

Bluebird Days contains 13 new original songs that I wrote and recorded.  As usual, I performed all of the vocal singing and instrument playing, which includes acoustic guitar, acoustic bass guitar, ukulele, piano, marimba, harmonica, drums, percussion and whistling.  I also did the production, arrangement, engineering, mixing, mastering, packaging design, etc.  

The cover photo was taken by my dad, Richard E. Cooley.  It was one of the first he ever took with a digital camera, many decades after he had let his family photography hobby lapse as my sister and I had grown up and moved away.  He was particularly pleased with and proud of this one, which I think reminded him that he had a particular artistic knack for taking a good picture.  

It is of a special place to my family, a ski chalet formerly owned by my sister that served as a getaway and an extended family gathering place associated with skiing, good times and fond memories.  As one might surmise, another favorite hobby of mine is skiing, one my immediate family have all had a passion for, and this album includes a few songs about skiing.  

When you release albums, you’re always excited that it includes the best you had available at the time, and this one is no exception.  As I look back on all of my releases, there are maybe one or two songs on each album I would now leave off, and there are maybe one or two little things that I could’ve improved about the ones I did include, but overall I am still pleased, and I have no reason to believe this one would be any different.  

An interesting fact about this one is that completing it got me on a roll of sorts to keep on with a similar theme, and I later came up with another album that also has songs about skiing.  I thought of releasing them as a double album, but then decided to do them separately, the first (this one) to be released now, and the other to be released two years later in June of 2022 in keeping with my every-two-years album release schedule.  

Due to a mistake by the distributor, Bluebird Days II actually came out before this one in 2019 when I submitted them both, so the sequel became a prequel.  It’s all good, so if you liked one, you will no doubt like the other.  

I officially described it as “bold, acoustic ski bum garage rock songs with traces of folk, blues, funk, punk, psychedelic, reggae, art rock, soft rock and Americana mostly about wanting to fly high and ski on sunny powder days in the mountains to escape the blues”.  

Several of these songs I started writing back when I was a ski bum living in Vail, Colorado, and I both revisited and revised them for this album.  Songs about skiing, songs about having the blues, songs with the word ‘blue’ in the title, the fresh powder and blue sky in the photo, all added up to a title that is used to describe a great day of skiing.  

Anyway, if all goes well and according to plan, this one should be available as a CD on Amazon and as a download or streaming album on Amazon Unlimited, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Spotify, Pandora, etc. on June 21^st, 2020.  As of this blog post, I’ve checked the main places to get music online, and it seems that the distribution went off without a hitch this time.  

In addition to those “big 5” web music services, there are some others carrying this new album of mine as well, including Tidal, Deezer, 7 Digital, Napster, iHeartRadio, Anghami, and Yandex.  Also you should know I’ve uploaded 5 videos for 5 of the songs on the album that are on my YouTube channel.  

There is a related news post where you can get all of the links here:  http://www.scottcooley.com/news/newalbumbluebirddaysavailablenow, but you can also get them from the album page here: www.scottcooley.com/albums/bluebird-days.

UTBGL Press Release - New Scott Cooley Studio Album

For immediate release from Scott Cooley Records in East Lansing, Michigan:

Scott Cooley’s latest record, Used To Be Good Looking, is the 6^th studio album he’s self-released on his independent label.  Available in CD format from Amazon, and download from iTunes, Google Play, Bandcamp, and Spotify on June 21^st, 2014, it contains 14 new original songs.  The first half of the record is a little more mainstream, poppy, and commercial with shorter rock songs, whereas the last half finds Scott venturing into longer and more serious songs with hints of jazz, bluegrass, folk, and blues.   Fans of the all-acoustic instrumentation, catchy melodies, and outstanding lyrics on his past releases will not be disappointed.

As far as live public performances go, he entertained attendees at Lamb’s Retreat for Songwriters in 2012 at the Birchwood Inn in Harbor Springs as a solo act, and also headlined the annual Schmoopiepalooza Festival in 2013 at Pickerel Lake in northern Michigan as a duo with his lovely and talented wife Lenore on accordion.  Scott’s recent experiences leading up to this release have included a few get-togethers with family and friends, a few days spent sailing, a few days spent skiing, walking the new golden retriever, Levi, and regular date nights with Lenore.  Essentially a non-performing songwriter and recording artist, Scott wrote and recorded these songs over the course of a few weekends, and an hour or two on a few different weeknights sporadically in his basement “man cave” spare bedroom studio since his last release.

The Scott Cooley band has in the past included wife Lenore as guest studio musician (accordion, keyboard, marimba, flute, background vocals) and spiritual producer Lucky Cooley (sadly, he’s now in dog heaven).  This album is different in that on the first 13 songs, there’s no one else on it, but Scott finally convinced Lenore to play right-hand-only accordion on the final track, “Smitten with the Mitten,” and thanks to her contribution, it’s a strong candidate for consideration of being designated as a state song for the state of Michigan.  Levi wasn’t quite up to speed yet on production advice, so as a solo artist, one-man band, and do-it-all-yourselfer, Scott wore all hats involved this time, recording himself playing guitar, bass, marimba, harmonica, drums, percussion, and singing the vocals in East Lansing. 

Scott’s fan interactions, aside from the aforementioned live performances, have been limited to only one or two announcements on his website, and several posts to his blog about his experiences with songwriting and music recording.  One fan chimed in with excitement upon discovering the song Mackinac Island from the 2006 Lakeside Landing album, and her intention to share with her college friends and family members in Michigan, and sure enough, the online MP3 downloads increased for that song again.  Another fan reached out to Scott to note that he loved the last album, Cherchez La Femme, and having been on hiatus from being a musician himself, felt inspired to get back into it. 

For complete details, see:

http://www.scottcooley.com/albums/used-to-be-good-looking