“Dorado combines musical sophistication with funky badass grooves and raw talent. I hear everything from Steely Dan to Beck. It is really groovy stuff"
- Portland engineer/musician and owner of 8 Ball studios Rob Stroup.
The head of Backline Studios Patrick Brewer, says of the group; “those guys are out there working all the time…and we thought the material was strikingly original”.
Dorado is a funk rock band from Portland, Oregon comprised of Sky Cooper (guitar, vocals), John Gobel (bass), James Ford (drums).
According to founder Sky Cooper, the creation of the band was a slow evolution."It's a kind of an Hip-Hop flavored rhythm section with a rock frosting.”
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 journey 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 and later Portland recording 5 albums under different names over the next 10 years. Eventually his live band turned into Dorado.
Johnny Gobel joined the group adding his distinctive 6 string bass funk style and signature floor synth lines. He was perfect,” said Cooper. “it’s just amazing watching Johnny dance and play bass, and the Moog Taurus synth with his foot and rap and sing harmonies at the same time. It blows me away every show..”
According to Johnny, “What I love about this band is the chemistry live. We can read off each other and anticipate dynamic changes.”
Soon after James Ford joined the group on drums. James is originally from the Portland area and says what attracted him to the band was “actually the combination of great grooves and catchy songs. Plus it gave me a place to combine acoustic and electronic drumming with my kit and the sample pads, in a songwriting format”.
“James is another one of those amazing multi-taskers.. He’s playing syncopated rhythms, triggering sample pads and singing harmonies..he’s like some future rhythm wizard. It really makes Dorado sound like a futuristic power trio with him in the line-up”
When the pandemic hit, and all shows were cancelled after gigging for 7 years together, they turned to the internet and started DTV, a weekly streaming show.
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