But there they were, a multitude of fans with their hair drenched and their ponchos soaked, ready to take in the music magic that they have heard about, magic that seems to seep from the pores of this country music powerhouse.
“I was pleasantly surprised,” Cooper, 22, tells PEOPLE with a slight laugh.
“Sometimes it feels like life is moving at a billion miles an hour,” Cooper says in an interview done just days before the Aug. 6 release of his first EP as a signed artist,Boy from Anderson County. “I’m doing everything possible to slow it down just a little bit so I can just take everything in, appreciate it and make a good impression out there.”
“I grew up in the middle of nowhere, so I wasverycountry,” Cooper says rather emphatically. “I had rules growing up and I knew what to do and what not to do. And that was instilled in me pretty hard.”
But just when you think you know Cooper, he displays another side to himself. He smiles as he sings a love song to his wife Jillian, whom he met when they both were in third grade. He talks about his father, whom he lost to brain cancer when he was just 14 years old. He gushes over the two children who call him Dad.
“My favorite thing to do is literally anything that they want to do,” Cooper says of his 3-year-old daughter Josie and 9-month-old daughter Charlee. “Just getting to spend time with them is what means the most to me. We play hide and seek a lot.”
Luckily, both sides of Cooper currently make their way onBoy from Anderson County.Over the course of six tracks dripping in a whole bunch of Texas twang, Cooper begins to tell the stories that he has long wanted to share.
“I would say that if a true fan looks at everything we do, there is not much they don’t know about me,” says Cooper, who snagged the attention of many via the release of his debut album,Good Ones Never Last, back in 2019.
“At least, that’s always been my goal. I think that comes from me meeting some people when I was younger that were people I looked up to, and then I met them and realized I never really knew them. I want people to know me well enough through my music, through social media, through articles, through everything…that they can come up to me and be like, ‘Dude, what’s up?'”
And to hell with the doubters.
“When we graduated high school, we got pregnant about six months later. I was supposed to finish college and blah, blah, blah,” he admits with a laugh. “There were all sorts of people that told me I was stupid for pursuing music. I think they were wrong.”
source: people.com
