“What’s most important to me is to be a link in the chain of folks singers before and after my time,” Trapper Schoepp says in light of his forthcoming album, Siren Songs. Recorded at Johnny Cash’s Cash Cabin in Hendersonville, TN, Trapper continues down the trail trod by his musical heroes. In 2019, the Milwaukee singer-songwriter published a long-lost song with Bob Dylan called “On, Wisconsin” – making him the youngest musician to share a co-writing credit with the Nobel Prize laureate. The song led to a #1 trending article in Rolling Stone and over a hundred tour dates worldwide.
Most recently, Trapper is featured on the Siren Songs album cover posing in the same pond where Johnny Cash would read and dispose of letters sent to him by Bob Dylan, protecting a private correspondence and kinship that started in the sixties. At these storied grounds, Trapper recorded his strongest collection of songs steeped in traditional American and Irish folk music – aided by producers John Jackson (Jayhawks, Ray Davies) and Patrick Sansone (Wilco).
Siren Songs is an apt title for an album filled with folklore and nautical imagery. In Greek mythology, sirens are enchanting half-bird maidens who sing to entice sailors off their ships, and ultimately to their doom.
