Local Folks: Warren Cooke

Warren Cooke had no idea that a playful comment he made to his dad in 1997 foreshadowed his future life as a rock star. But that’s exactly what happened.

Cooke moved with his family from Tampa to Jacksonville that year to attend Douglas Anderson School of the Arts (DA).

“If I’m going to go to an art school, I’m going to put together a band,” Cooke told his dad, partly joking. Though his father grew up in the Ortega area, Cooke was brand new in town and knew no one.

Whether it was fate or serendipity, Cooke met guitarist Ben Harper in the cafeteria on his second day at DA. That same day the two connected with drummer Longineu Parsons, a former DA student who had been touring internationally with his father – a world-famous jazz trumpet player.

“It started with Ben Harper, Longineu Parsons and I playing in Ben’s bedroom in his mom’s house,” Cooke said.

They named the band Yellowcard – a soccer penalty and inside joke the teenage punk rockers used at parties.

Adding guitarist Todd Clary and lead singer Ben Dobson, the band adopted a hardcore punk style. They found their signature sound after adding fellow DA student Sean Mackin, a violinist.

But after two years of performing locally, the band struggled to break through in Jacksonville, and some band members left to pursue other projects. With a new lead singer (Ryan Key, also a DA grad), the band members decided to move to Los Angeles.

“I think all of our parents were like, ‘What the hell are you guys doing?’ But we saw a vision. We saw other bands that were starting to break through, and we knew with our background and training, if we put the time into it, we had a shot,” Cooke said. And he was right.

In California, Yellowcard signed with a small label, released their first full-length album, One for the Kids, and went on a national tour. Audiences grew at each show as the tour went on.

“We became known as the pop-punk band that had a violinist and also did backflips on stage, whatever we could do to get people to remember us,” Cooke said. 

When the band signed with Capitol Records, their ascent to fame accelerated. Cooke remembers performing at the Olympics Opening Ceremony in Salt Lake City, Utah, in front of thousands of people.

“That was the height of success for me,” Cooke said, but it would be short-lived for him.

The band began working on its next album, Ocean Avenue, and Cooke disagreed with the stylistic changes record label executives wanted to make. He decided to leave the band in 2002, just before Ocean Avenue was released. The album reached number 23 on the US Billboard 200 and was certified platinum in the US.

“Some would say I did all the hard legwork and then left right before the payoff,” Cooke joked. “But for me, it was an amazing experience. I was in the band for five or six years, got to travel, got to play some amazing shows.”

Cooke moved back to Jacksonville and became a fill-in bassist for nationally touring bands. He married, had kids and settled into steady work.

“Over the last 20 years, I’ve moved away from Jacksonville a couple times, and I’ve always come back here. I love Jacksonville; I think it’s an amazing community. It’s a great city with a lot of opportunity, and it’s constantly expanding,” he said.

Cooke also found a new passion: teaching.

“I started teaching piano, bass, guitar, even some ukulele,” he said. “It’s inspiring to watch somebody all of a sudden become passionate about an instrument when you just show them a couple little tricks of the trade. To me that’s worth more than any amount of money because it’s passing on knowledge.”

While Cooke once taught private lessons full-time, today he focuses on just a handful of students and enjoys songwriting with some of them.

“I have two students right now that are really, really good at it. One of them is a bass player named Sophia. And she is really good at writing bass lines to chords. It’s just a way to teach them how to be creative,” Cooke said.

Cooke still performs (and probably always will). He plays in two cover bands and an original punk band called Flag On Fire. With a life that is filled with music, family and purpose, he has no regrets. And he hopes his story inspires and encourages young musicians who dream of making it big someday. 

“It’s just awesome to show them that it’s possible. I remember when I was 13 or 14, and I first started taking guitar lessons, and people would say, ‘Oh, you’re never going to make it, you know, there’s only one out of a million people that ever make it in the music business.’ So, now I can say to kids, ‘Hey, if I can do it, you can do it.’”