“There’s like a punk element, a big ‘fuck you’ element in a really light and fun way,” Liz Cooper proclaims of her It’s A New Day Tour, which resumes tonight in her current home state of Vermont (where she moved last July after about half a decade in Brooklyn) and plays our very own MilkBoy this coming Sunday, April 26th. The tour is in support of Cooper’s latest LP, New Day, a psychedelic pop record which dropped this February, following up 2021’s Hot Sass, Liz’s first official solo album after fronting Liz Cooper & The Stampede on 2018’s Window Flowers.
New Day was born at a time when Cooper had recently relocated to NYC after almost 10 years in Nashville — whose musicians she still regularly plays with and where she was at the time of our recent phone chat — and first became comfortable celebrating her queerness. The album has the singer/songwriter officially coming out as she muses about the ups and downs of her first queer relationship and breakup. “I started working on these songs at the end of 2020 and in 2021. It was kind of a shot in the dark. I was going through a lot personally in my living situation… It was all coming together very slowly for me,” she explains of the LP.
“It’s all been an experiment for me of playing these songs and seeing what people think of it,” Liz tells me of the headlining dates behind New Day, which began mid-March in Phoenix. However, she says the reactions have been overwhelmingly positive: “I was wondering if people would be like, ‘Play [Liz Cooper & The Stampede’s] ‘Mountain Man!’ but they haven’t! People are reacting more to my new songs than my other songs.” She says she’s even been touched to have fans tell her their own stories of going through breakups or just going through the trials and tribulations of life while visiting her at the merch table.
“These shows have just been about me processing being able to tell my story and move through this really traumatic piece of my life… I’m trying to be as true as possible to the sounds of the record, a journey in a live setting,” Cooper tells me, but also notes that the songs of New Day have really been working live: “We’ve been playing almost all of the songs off of the new record. Singing ‘IDFK’ and ‘Loss of Signal’ has been really special. They’re heavy songs and they’re epic live.” She also says she’s had exceptionally moving reactions to the title track and “Tattoo,” a woozy ballad about realizing you’re falling in love with a friend to the soundtrack of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
Production duties on New Day were handled by Liz Cooper and Dan Molad (and co-produced by Alex Pfender), who PHILTHY readers might know from Lucius and Coco, in addition to his production work with phriends like The Harmaleighs and David Wax Museum. While Molad mixed Liz’s Hot Sass, she admits that the two hadn’t really gotten the chance to hang out and get to know each other until the latest record, but says they clicked just about immediately: “He’s a big ‘feel’ person, and so am I. I sent a bunch of demos, and sometimes maybe he’d see something when even I didn’t see something. Dan is very positive and even keeled… and very meticulous, he has insane skills technologically.” She tells me she eventually found herself writing songs on the spot as the two went back and forth.
Liz has also found herself recently collaborating with New England filmmaker Wes Sterrs, who directed Official Music Videos and Lyric Videos for both “New Day” and “IDFK,” who she tells me she’s also really connected with: “It’s our first time working together and I feel like he really nailed it and we have an insane creative energy together. I sent him the record and he was like, ‘Okay, Liz, let’s fucking go!’” But she also makes sure to give credit to her longtime friends whose work served as the origins of the look: “The inspiration was the photoshoot I did for the cover with Michael Heinz and Emily Nolan, who have been really close friends for a long time, and even roommates for a while when I was living in Brooklyn, and they fully understand me, so that was a starting point for Wes.”
In addition to working on all of her recent moving images, Wes Sterrs has also been helping Cooper to make regional connections, including Maine musician Geneviève Beaudoin, whose Dead Gowns will be providing support for Liz Cooper for the next week, which Liz tells me she’s quite excited about: “This will be the first time I’ve ever met her, but I met her through Wes, and I love making those New England connections. I love all their sounds and their visuals, so I’m really excited to see how she does it live.” And the night before Liz Cooper and Dead Gowns play MilkBoy, April 25th, the very same stage will be headlined by Caroline Kingsbury, Cooper’s friend who appears on New Day track “Boy Toy.” “Caroline is such a freaking star! If you need a release and need to have fun and scream at the top of your lungs, go see Caroline Kingsbury!” Liz says of her buddy.
The It’s A New Day Tour wraps May 9th in Detroit, and Liz tells me that, as much as she’s enjoying herself, she’s also excited to get to spend some time in her new home: “This whole album, the album release and tour, the whole purpose was to move through this chapter and land and process and heal… and I’m really looking forward to landing in Vermont.” But she tells me that she will likely be back out there relatively soon… while also making sure to embrace the downtime: “I’m gonna keep working my ass off to be on the road, and also work on new music, just doing a bunch of different things. It’ll be the season of putting the pedal to the metal, but also allowing myself time to relax and trying to just leave shit behind and not let it eat away at my soul [laughs].”
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