Three hours after a recent meeting at an East Dallas coffee shop, singer-songwriter Travis Hopper sent an urgent e-mail. While driving home, he'd thought of a few things he'd meant to say, but didn't.
"I have an amazing ability to figure out exact [+]Three hours after a recent meeting at an East Dallas coffee shop, singer-songwriter Travis Hopper sent an urgent e-mail. While driving home, he'd thought of a few things he'd meant to say, but didn't.
"I have an amazing ability to figure out exactly what I want to say about an hour after I needed to say it," he wrote. "Which, come to think of it, is maybe why I write songs in the first place."
It's funny because in a way, repeated plays of his debut album, "All the Lights in the City Tonight", reveal almost everything you need to know about the guy: He's an endearingly fussy alt-country storyteller with a mind full of catchy melodies. But coffee talk did help paint a picture of the experiences and relationships that spawned the 10 songs on "All the Lights in the City Tonight".
After graduating from Texas A&M, the Houston native moved to Dallas with his girlfriend in 2001. He'd played guitar and written songs in college, but didn't feel he fit into Aggieland's music scene. He found Dallas to be much more welcoming, especially after a few evenings at the Barley House on Henderson Ave.
"It was the place that helped me decide not to sell my guitar," he says.
Hopper later landed a gig as a guitarist for a band called the Americanos. That lasted until the summer of 2003, when the band broke up. The timing couldn't have been worse, because he was also going through a split with the girlfriend he'd followed here.
Inspired by his and his friends' troubles, Hopper began fashioning musical tales of lost love, late-night walks and barstool blues. He wrote "Tietze Park" while strolling by the East Dallas landmark, after days of lamenting his broken relationship. "I'd Like to Have You Here (If You Want to Stay)" came from drinking away his sorrows at, you guessed it, the Barley House.
Hopper's lyrics are strikingly literal, but the small geographic and chronological details don't lessen the songs' universal appeal.
That's probably why respected local artist Salim Nourallah agreed to record and mix them at his studio, Pleasantry Lane. "There was something about the production of Salim's Polaroid CD that I liked, the clean drums," Hopper says. "So I basically accosted him at Sons of Hermann Hall one night. He ended up liking my songs enough to want
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