Like many people in today's scrambled world, Daniel Cioper (Chi-o-per) has searched for a place to belong. He was born in Austin, a seventh generation Texan, and grew up in St. Paul, MN where the people are nice and the winters cold. As a child he had a love for baseball, candy and slapstick comedy. It wasn't until he went off to Chicago for film school that his mind started to open to the deeper things in life. Soon poetry and philosophy were discovered within like lost underwater cities and all the treasures of the soul followed. He eventually found that his poetic form of expression would be best suited for music so, picking up that old axe he learned to play as a teen, he went about learning the wonderful art of songwriting! And he found his voice within like an animal that had been trapped in a cage.
Releasing it and training it has been a long tested road but well worth the effort.
Daniel is influenced by the great voices in 20th century music: Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Townes Van Zant, and John Lennon. But what he creates, though it may sound classic, comes from an original place and is as contemporary as it gets.
He has broad range of voices, both high to falsetto, and low. His songs range from raucous political anthems to intimate love ballads to upbeat pop music or dark confessions. Whatever this experiment we cal "life" is, Daniel is trying to put his finger on it.
Cioper is in the process of forming a band. In the meantime he is performing solo with acoustic guitar and harmonica rack.