Album Notes

Dorado : Golden. Dorado is a groove-based rock band from Portland, Oregon comprised of Sky Cooper (guitar, vocals), Johnny G (bass), Steve Ellingson (keys), and Chris Foster (drums). According to founder Sky Cooper, the creation of the band was a slow evolution.“I’ve had the project going for 5 years.,” he said. “It’s only since this lineup has solidified that the real nature of the beast has manifested itself as a kind of hybrid between a hip hop flavored rhythm section with a rock frosting.” From its early days with New York session drummer Joe Trump and Minneapolis bass player Keith Watson, Dorado has been taking its lifeblood from the rhythm section. “I admire good pop songs, and hooks and all that, but if I can’t move to it, it’s not totally grabbing me,” said Cooper. “The same can be said about the jam band circuit; there are a lot of killer musicians out there taking solos for 20 minutes on solid grooves, but there isn’t any compelling lyric or structure to bring it together.” Cooper is an Australian ex-patriot who studied with music legend Yusef Lateef at Elliott Smith’s alma mater, Hampshire College. He then spent three years traveling between continents, couch surfing at friend’s places. This long stint of homelessness sated some of Sky’s wanderlust, but starting a working band remained elusive. Just before 9/11 he was in northern Queensland [Australia] playing bluegrass covers at an outback pub with an 80-year-old bass player and getting heckled by the crowd for his American accent. “Things weren’t going exactly to plan, Actually the truth was I hadn’t conceived a particularly good plan anyway. I had just fallen off the map all together,” he said. So Cooper returned to San Francisco in 2002 and recorded an acoustic EP follow-up to his 2000 solo effort “Wednesday,” called “Coffeehouse.” Then a short skip to Portland, Oregon spun the wheels that grew into Dorado. After four years of lineup changes, the group solidified. Steve Ellingson was the first current member to join Dorado. A talented keyboard player who moonlighted with numerous groups, he was brought in for a gig in 2005. With no chance to rehearse beforehand, it was a “seat of the pants” night. “I got a CD in the mail from Sky and showed up to the gig with an arsenal of keyboards to play in front of four people,” said Ellingson. His sound quickly jelled and his Moog lines soon became a fixture of Dorado’s sound. Johnny G was a bass player in search of a band. Raised in Florida, and playing in groups his whole life, he had moved to Oregon in 2004. After a few auditions, he had decided maybe Portland’s alternative rock-laden scene didn’t have the funky group he was after. Then in 2006 a friend suggested he check out a local funk group called Dorado. “I had just let our last bass player go, and was feeling pretty burnt out on the whole band thing. Out of nowhere I got a myspace message from a bass player that had tried out 6 months previous saying if we still needed someone his friend from Florida was the perfect guy. He was right,” said Cooper. The first few shows went well, but original drummer Joe Trump was taking on tours in Japan and Europe with a fusion band and couldn’t spare the extra time for Dorado rehearsals. Sky remembers, “a guy contacted Joe through the Dorado website and offered him well paid overseas gigs. How can you refuse that? We just had to find someone with his chops, which amazingly, we did.” Their search ended with drum phenomenon Chris Foster. Son of virtuoso B3 organist Ronnie Foster (Stevie Wonder, George Benson), Chris grew up in a music-rich environment and had his first tour at age 14. Foster’s touring track record was solid and he was making good money as a sideman, but was finding himself frustrated with the lack of creative input. Chris left his steady gig in Vegas and took a leap of faith, returning to Portland in search of something he could add his own voice to. “Dorado finally