Dorado
Dorado is a funk rock band from Portland, Oregon comprised of Sky Cooper (guitar, vocals), Johnny G (bass), James Ford (drums).
According to founder Sky Cooper, the creation of the band was a slow evolution.”It’s a kind of an Hip-Hop flavored rhythm section with a rock frosting.”
From its early days with New York session drummer Joe Trump and Minneapolis bass player Keith Watson, Dorado has been taking its lifeblood from the rhythm section.
“I admire good pop songs, and hooks and all that, but if I can’t move to it, it’s not totally grabbing me,” said Cooper. “The reverse can be said about the jam band circuit; there are a lot of killer musicians out there that I admire, taking solos for 20 minutes on solid grooves, but it’s rare to see a compelling lyric or structure to bring it together. We’ve still got some growing to do, but that’s the direction we are heading”.
Cooper is an Australian ex-patriot who studied with music legend Yusef Lateef at Elliott Smith’s alma mater, Hampshire College. He then spent three years traveling between continents, couch surfing at friend’s places. This long stint of homelessness sated some of Sky’s wanderlust, but starting a working band remained elusive.
Just before 9/11 he was in northern Queensland [Australia] playing bluegrass covers at an outback pub with an 80-year-old bass player and getting heckled by the crowd for his American accent. “Things weren’t going exactly to plan, Actually the truth was I hadn’t conceived a particularly good plan anyway. I had just fallen off the map all together,” he said.
So Cooper returned to San Francisco and recorded an acoustic EP follow-up to his first solo effort “Wednesday,” called “Coffeehouse.” Then a short skip to Portland, Oregon spun the wheels that grew into Dorado.
The first Dorado album was strictly a studio project incorporating 24 different musicians. While preparing for the CD release show they lost their bass player.
“Our bass player left, and I was feeling pretty burnt out on the whole band thing. Out of nowhere I got a message from a bass player that had tried out 6 months previous saying if we still needed someone his friend from Florida was the perfect guy.” Johnny G joined the group adding his distinctive 6 string bass funk style and signature floor synth lines.
He was perfect,” said Cooper. “it’s just amazing watching Johnny play bass, and the Moog Taurus synth with his foot and rap and sing harmonies at the same time. It blows me away every show..”
The first few shows went well, and Dorado’s first full length “Dorado Sound” was released.
Original drummer Joe Trump started taking on tours in Japan and Europe with a fusion band and couldn’t spare the extra time for Dorado rehearsals. Sky remembers, “a guy contacted Joe through the Dorado website and offered him well paid overseas gigs. “How could he refuse that?”
Soon after their second release “Say What You Mean” James Ford joined the group on drums. James is originally from the Portland area and says what attracted him to the band was “johnny being a sex symbol!…Ha! Actually the combination of great grooves and catchy songs. Plus it gave me a place to combine acoustic and electronic drumming with my kit and the sample pads in a songwriting format”.
“James is another one of those amazing multi-taskers! He’s playing sick syncopated rhythms, triggering sample pads and singing harmonies..he’s like some future rhythm wizard. It really makes Dorado sound like a futuristic power trio with him in the line-up” -Sky
According to Johnny, “What I love about this band is the chemistry live. We can read off each other and anticipate dynamic changes.”
Dorado’s third album is slated for 2016.