Raven's Song

Some things just are Key West to me. A rooster perched atop an illegally parked cop car, a drunken drag queen grabbing my junk just because she thinks I am cute, conch fritters, tattooed waitresses, and of course, Raven Cooper.
When the Lovely and I escaped to the Keys almost a decade ago, on a lark, with ten dollars in our pocket, we immediately did two things; spent the ten on Coronas at Capt. Tony’s and heard Raven sing at Sunset Pier. She was doing “Me and Bobby McGee” in a growling whiskey voice so alive that I had to keep staring to make sure that I wasn’t back at the Fillmore in ’69. We were broke, homeless, and completely happy. Our love was so new that it squeaked. Before long, it was working three jobs, paying twelve hundred dollar rents, and accepting responsibilities that we promised each other would never be heaped upon us again.
I told Raven it was our honeymoon, which was almost true, and she gave us her CD as a gift. We carried that disc with us for almost two years and ten thousand miles across this country until The Lovely threw it at me one night somewhere in Wyoming. It was destroyed. I probably deserved it.
I have kept up with Raven’s career over the years and have always wondered why she is not rich and famous by now. No Grammys, no recording contracts. She has an incredible voice and a smoldering stage presence. She sings in six different languages. She is beautiful and funny and can play one mean guitar when provoked. Her ability to take a fantastic song such as Annie Lennox’s “Why” and create something even more powerful is amazing but it is her talent turning a unique rhythmic phrase in original songs such as “It’s a Holdup” that really catch my attention as a writer. I had even heard rumors of her almost going to American Idol and was confused why that never happened.
Every great song has a back story. Raven’s song is no exception. A redneck Mexican/German from Little Rock earning her blues on the streets of Memphis, adding spice to the musical gumbo of New Orleans, blowing the roof off of Montana and every other roadhouse, dive and juke joint along the way. From firsthand experience, the lonely road takes its toll. Bad romances, drugs, alcohol, all fuzzily framed by amusing memories and scars you don’t remember receiving. Or giving. As I sit down with Raven at the Schooner Wharf and listen to her gritty unapologetic truth, I realize how easy it would be to dismiss it all as just another rock and roll cliché’, which it is, reminiscent of early Janis Joplin, almost. It is also the life song of a very talented underappreciated chanteuse. She tells the worst of it with an ambivalent smile and mischievous laughter that says she has taken her punches, swung a few of her own, and surprising even her, has come out of it a better person.
She gives most of the credit to her partner, David. David has become a lot of things to Raven; her manager, father of her child, her videographer, her roadie. If you ask her, however, she will tell you that he is her everything. The love of her life and the guy who helped her kick the drugs by keeping away the bad influences and holding her hand when she didn’t want it held. The respect they share for each other is obvious.
It would be easy to sit here and rehash all the same fluff about Raven Cooper; where and when she plays, her favorite songs to perform, why she moved here, all that crap. I could even go into the reason why she didn’t even go to the American Idol audition. That is not what this story is about. This began as a story of why Raven Cooper epitomizes everything Key West to me. I haven’t merely been rambling.
Her dusky voice reminds me of new loves and sunsets. The days when broke was acceptable and adventure was the raison d’être. Raven also reminds me that, like the rest of us Key West folk, although we are sometimes bruised and misguided and wildly intoxicated; we can always come back home, gather up old friends and make beautiful music together.