Greg Trooper

Greg Trooper grew up in New Jersey and composed material that reached Steve Earle as well as Vince Gill. Early in the 1970s he abandoned Greenwich Village’s folk venues for Austin’s music circuit in Texas, then continued on to Lawrence, Kansas, where he enrolled in college and sharpened his guitar technique, vocal delivery, and songcraft.

During the 1980s and into the mid-1990s Trooper settled again in New York and cut his first two albums, We Won’t Dance and the critically acclaimed Everywhere. Those releases prompted Earle to record the Trooper composition “Little Sister.”

Early in the 1990s Trooper crossed paths with fellow New Jerseyan Garry Tallent, the former E Street Band bassist who would likewise relocate to Nashville. Tallent produced the 1996 album Noises in the Hallway and issued it on his D’Ville Records imprint. Popular Demons appeared two years afterward.

Following that project, Trooper joined the roster of Nashville’s noted independent Element Records, which delivered Straight Down Rain in 2001. He next moved to the respected Sugar Hill label, releasing the excellent Floating in 2003 and Make It Through This World in 2005.

After returning to New York and establishing himself in Brooklyn in 2008, Trooper placed two albums with the 52 Shakes label—2011’s Upside-Town Town and 2013’s Incident on Willow Street—while also surfacing the previously unreleased 1995 recording The Williamsburg Affair. The live set Live at the Rock Room arrived in 2015. Trooper died of pancreatic cancer in early 2017.