Critic Turns Musician: Alex Cook from The Rakers

Alex V. Cook is a journalist and music critic who has written for an assortment of publications including The Believer, The Oxford American, DownBeat, and Paste Magazine. His book Darkness, Racket and Twang: Essential Listening from the Fringes of Popular and Unpopular Culture is a compilation of his music essays, which includes commentary on artists ranging from Lou Reed to Bob Dylan to the Mountain Goats.

He has also written a book on Louisiana’s  juke joints called Louisiana Saturday Night: Looking for a Good Time in South Louisiana’s Juke Joints, Honky-Tonks, and Dance Halls.

Alex also sings and plays guitar for The Rakers, a Baton Rouge band that has played at a number of prominent venues around town including The Baton Rouge Gallery. The band describes itself as “the thinking man’s drinking band.”

He’s one of the few critics I know of who started playing music after working as a critic. As you’ll hear from Alex in the interview, he got started as a musician relatively late compared to other musicians, but he still holds his own amidst musicians who have been playing far longer.

Some of the things we discuss include

• What makes for a great album
• Why a good critique can be a gift to the person receiving it
• The relationship between critic and artist and how they influence each others
• What popular bands Alex likes and dislikes and why
• How his background as a music critic informs his music sensibilities
• Why showmanship and point of view matter to an artist

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For more tips on how to succeed as a musician, check out this interview I did with Bree Noble, a musician who got to sing at Dodger Stadium and who now coaches other musicians and interviews industry luminaries.

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