The bit of America south of the Mason-Dixon Line has been romanticised by everyone from William Faulkner to Nick Cave, but who can blame them? It’s the birthplace of jazz, the blues and rock’n’roll, which is a pretty formidable heritage. In the 21st century, the South hasn’t stopped producing singular musical talent, in the shape of, say, Pharrell Williams, Missy Elliott and Justin Timberlake. Which puts Ross Copperman in good company.
The boy from Roanoke, Virginia (the nearest big city is Washington DC, 170 miles north) has soulfulness and melody in his bones. He’s sung for as long as he can remember – he’ll tell you about being five years old and wailing along to the car radio with Mom. But what marks him out, in a region where even the postman sings a bit, is his ability to turn the music in his head into widescreen tunes. That’s “widescreen” as in “sweeping melodies and spacious choruses,” but his emotive, scuffed-up voice bestows an intimacy that makes each song feel as if it were written for the listener alone.
Tell him he’s not bad and he does the Southern-boy thing of shaking his head and saying, Aw, go on. But then he recounts a story about being in a high-school band with guys who wouldn’t let him sing or write songs. “They’d say, ‘No, Ross, we can’t use that,’ and I thought I probably wasn’t that good. So I did a songwriting class at college and wrote ‘Fly Away,’ and the professor said, ‘That’s pretty special’.”
What else could he do but give up all thought of being a lawyer (his youthful ambition, along with being a jazz singer) and turn music from a hobby into his 24/7 life? His parents – Dad a restaurant owner, Mom a parole officer – hadn’t been happy during his jazz-vocalist phase (which lasted a couple of years in his mid-teens), but when he directed his thoughts toward rock, and began to write strikingly accomplished songs, they realised their only son knew what he was doing.
After college, he did an internship at a New York jingle house, where he wrote advertising jingles to order. There aren’t many popsters who can boast that their first hit was a tune for a Fisher-Price toys TV ad – Ross may be the only one. But it was a start, and, newly confident, he began entering competitions. He came third out of 35,000 entrants in the USA Songwriting Competition (his swag: “$5000 and a bunch of free stuff”), and then was named Best Unsigned Artist in the Freshtrax.com contest.
The Freshtrax prize was $10,000 and a 40-date tour of America. It wasn’t exactly a five-star jaunt - “I’d be by myself, fly to each city alone and do the show” - but it was great for literally getting his act together. “It got my chops up, and I was playing and going to places I’d never have gone to, like South Beach, Idaho.” And he kept touring for the next year, on a have-guitar-will-travel basis, until publishing companies and record labels started offering him deals.
This was a couple of years ago, and by then Ross knew exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to come to London. Really. Despite the Virginia accent and soulful voice, he’s a true-blue Anglophile, inspired by Radiohead, The Beatles and Muse. “I like their melodies and harmonies, and the songs are better. You can hear the English influence in my songs and my articulation.” Lest he seem unpatriotic, he hastens to add that he doesn’t have much truck with Brit boy-bands: “At least American ones are talented and good-looking.” Well, that’s McFly told.
The success of The Strokes, Scissor Sisters and Killers, all of whom broke Britain first, spurred him to turn down American deals. And his faith that the UK music business would recognise a cool American talent when they saw it was rewarded. He moved to London after signing his deal, and, installed in a flat in West Kensington, is now living his dream of full-time residency in the land of innovative music and tepid Coke (he doesn’t get the thing about Brits not using ice).
“People at my shows here warm to the fact that I’m American. I’ll ask if anyone here is from Virginia and they say, ‘Yeah!’ and I’ll think, What are you cheering for? I’m only asking if you’re from Virginia! I do a cover of [Gnarls Barkley’s] ‘Crazy,’ and I say, ‘This is a song I wrote that got a little airplay,’ and people afterwards ask if I really wrote it!” Uh, he didn’t.
On the gorgeously introspective “Guilty Pleasure,” which was debute on UPop 29, for instance, the story behind the song is weirdish: he was invited to a party at the Playboy Mansion. Being a red-blooded 24-year-old, he went. “There were loads of girls around, trying to be in Playboy, and it turned out that these girls are hired to come and flirt with the guests. I felt sorry for them. Afterwards, I wrote ‘Guilty Pleasure.’”
There’s growing interest in his music in America. Ross has arrived at a time when quality young male singers are on the up (see also James Morrison and Ray Lamontagne). The door is open. A striking Southerner is walking through it.