“… Proudly West Virginian
Appalachia’s living
When my people winning
Don’t you dare forget it …”
To hear that hook is to know, immediately, that Trevor Cooke is a songwriter, musician and performer who prefers not to sing the Mountain State blues.
That is, the age-old warble about the West Virginia kid who comes of age here, goes to school here and then bails on the place — as quickly as he can.
“West Virginia is who I am,” he’ll say.
“Appalachia is who I am. This place, this region, absolutely defines me.”
In turn, the 20-year-old junior majoring in WVU’s Music Business and Industry Program is redefining a true signature song of West Virginia.
That would be “Country Roads,” the singalong that made the state a destination on AM radio in April 1971, when a smiling, shag-haired folk singer John Denver released it as a single.
Cooke, who blends hip-hop, alternative and just about everything else in the songs he writes and performs, came out with urban energy when he released “Proudly West Virginian,” his take on the tune, on his own music label, EGO, three weeks ago.
Visit his website at https://www.trevorcooke.com/ to hear it.
If the backup band sounds familiar, that’s because it is.
The sonic blast, in fact, couldn’t be more familiar to the people — born and bred, or otherwise — who cruise those rural thoroughfares on a daily basis.
With the blessing of the university’s School of Music, Cooke used high-tech samplings of the “Pride of West Virginia” marching band, working through the now-iconic “Country Roads” arrangement first scored by professor emeritus James Miltenberger, who is still playing jazz piano gigs into his 80s.
“My grandparents live within walking distance of Mountaineer Field,” said Cooke, a city native.
“I heard Dr. Miltenberger’s ‘Country Roads’ every Saturday in Morgantown. To be able to do something with that arrangement and the Pride is just amazing to me.”
Under the lights (electric and eclectic)
Cook’s version hits that brass swagger, which he then layers with his own funky bass line, hip-hop drums and lyrics that rhyme the 160-year revolution, and evolution, that comprises West Virginia’s social and labor history.
“ … Singing through the pain
To put the plan in motion
Need clean water drains
No runoff potion
Need vacation days
And some airways open
The companies, the parasites
That keepin’ us chokin’ …”
While he’d been thinking about such a song for some time, the lyrics still rushed with the velocity of the New River after a spring thaw.
He was taking a course titled “Women in Appalachia,” about the same stretch he was coming to terms with actually being an Appalachian and a West Virginian: Loud, proud and all that implies.
“I just started writing,” he said, “and there it was.”
For “Proudly West Virginian,” it was a matter of sonic convergence.
A couple of years previous, Cooke’s program produced a “Country Roads” compilation, featuring a range of interpretations of the tune.
Miltenberger himself provided a solo jazz version on piano — and the album boasted other eclectic offerings from cello takes, operatic takes, a steel drum run through and flat-out flatpicking on a bluegrass version.
The Pride of West Virginia put down its track under the lights on a football field — just not the one you’re thinking of, said Joshua Swiger, a working musician and associate professor who helped inspire Cooke’s version, even if he didn’t realize it at the time.
“It was a cold night about this time of the year,” Swiger said.
“The band had to go to University High School’s stadium because Mountaineer Field is a big echo chamber when there’s no one it.
“The Pride nailed it, like the Pride always nails it, and I had the recordings. I threw ‘em to Trevor and said, ‘Hey, play around with this. See what you come up with.’”
‘Right here, in West Virginia’
When Swiger heard the final version, he made sure his colleagues in the School of Music did, too.
“I said, ‘Are you guys hearing this?’ What a cool twist. He came back with a whole new approach.”
And one built on collaboration, the professor said.
“So often, music schools are wedded to classical or jazz. Trevor took something and he made it contemporary, and he made it his. This is what we need to be doing around here.”
That’s what Cooke wants to do around here.
“I want to keep writing and playing gigs,” he said.
“I want to produce my music and other people’s music, right here, in West Virginia.”
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