Feature in Fringe Magazine!

If you're in Nashville and happen to pick up a the most recent copy of Fringe Magazine, you may see a familiar face. Every issue they feature a songwriter in a section called "Hello, Songwriter," and I couldn't be more honored to have been selected.

(Written by Andrea Bailey Willits; Photographs by Maya Laurent Photography)

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Day jobs can be the death of your dreams. Not for songwriter Ben Cooper. 

Pulling off his green apron, Ben Cooper clocked out of another 4 a.m. shift at the West End Starbucks. As usual, his pockets were full of crinkled receipts where he’d quickly scribbled song titles and ideas between making mochas. He couldn’t wait to get home and sit down at his upright piano; then his real eight-hour workday could begin.

“I was working for the job I wanted, not the one I had,” Cooper says. “So I allowed for a 40-hour songwriting week by working crazy shifts at Starbucks.”

Barista by day, songwriter by night—it was the most exhausting year of Cooper’s life. But in late 2008, the Belmont graduate from Fort Wayne, Ind., inked a publishing deal with Writer’s Den Music Group and quit steaming milk. Two years later, he’s happily doing what he loves and just landed eight cuts on bluegrass artist Ricky Skaggs’ new record, Mosaic...

Read the rest of the interview here, beginning on page 55.

And be sure to check out fringemagazine.com.

Keep writing,

Ben