It’s a sentiment shared by manyunderage musicians in the city, but Schoepp seems to feel it particularlydeeply. As you’d expect from a songwriter whose latest album, Lived and Moved, exudes an eagerness tomeet life’s challenges as quickly as possible, Shoepp is itching to give hisband Trapper Schoepp & The Shades a full push.
“I feel like it’s definitely hardgetting some people to take us seriously at first,” the 19-year-old UWMsophomore says. “We just got back from a tour of six or seven shows around Wisconsin, and themajority of the people at those shows were older, and the bands we played withwere older. Usually once we get to the venue and start playing, people arelike, ‘OK, you guys aren’t so bad,’ or ‘That young kid can write a song,’ but Ijust don’t see why age really matters that much.”
Livedand Moved certainly doesn’t sound like the work of a 19-year-old.With a clean, professional sound captured by one of Milwaukee’s go-toproducers, Justin Perkinswho Schoepp sought out, having heard his recordingsfor acts like Cory Chisel, Blueheels and Limbeckthe album recalls the ramblingAmericana of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapessessions with The Band, tempered by some of the jaunty chime of I.R.S.-eraR.E.M.
Schoepp is a distinguished songwriter,with a knack for bold sentiments and an ear for clean melodies, and he’sself-aware enough to understand the irony of a 19-year-old titling his secondalbum Lived and Moved. The titlerefers, quite literally, to capture Schoepp’s move to Milwaukee from ruralEllsworth, Wis.proud home to the annual Cheese Curd Festival few peopleoutside of Ellsworth have heard of, and little else.
“I really wanted to get out of thatsmall town, but I think that everyone who goes through that transitional phasefeels a little lost,” he says. “You have all this ambition, but you’re reallyclueless and you don’t know what to do with it. There’s this uncertainty. Sofor me, recording this record was definitely a way to deal with thoseadolescent blues that I think everyone experiences around this age.”
For all its songs about youth, though,Schoepp sometimes seems to have the soul of an old man. His favorite Dylanalbum, for instance, is Dylan’s 1997 withered comeback effort Time Out of Mind.
“Much as I love Dylan’s sociallycharged, early work, it’s his love songs that really get me,” Schoepp says. “Ilove the way he opened up over his career. You look at his earlier work andit’s all about the outside world. It took him until 1975’s Blood on the Tracks to really open up about his own life, and by Time Out of Mind he was so much morecandid.”
By that timeline, Schoepp has a stronghead start. Dylan didn’t even release his first album until he was 20.
TrapperSchoepp & The Shades play an 8 p.m. CD release show with The Battle Royale,The Last Rhino and Ian Olvera & The Sleepwalkers at the Miramar Theatre onFriday, Feb. 12. The $5 cover includes a copy of the CD.
