John Sagner (a.k.a. Cooker John) grew up in suburban New Jersey, studying piano as a kid. At the age of 12, he began taking lessons from recording artist Artie Traum at Noah Wolfe's guitar studio in New York City, learning folk songs and fingerpicking.

After high school in Putney, Vermont, John and a few of his classmates started a band called the Downchildren, named after the Sonnyboy Williamson tune. They played bars in Southhampton and frat parties at Columbia College where John was an English major for two years before dropping out — just before the students took over the school and smoked cigars in the Dean's Office.

The Downchildren recorded a demo at Impact Sound, home of the ESP label that hosted artists like Sun Ra, The Fugs, Pearls Before Swine, and The Holy Modal Rounders. John also recorded at the Record Plant in Manhattan with engineer Jack Adams, playing bass for Chris and Janet Morris in a band called Living Proof. There he witnessed sessions that included such luminaries as King Curtis, Jimi Hendrix, and Todd Rundgren.

The early '70s found John playing bass and guitar in a cover band called Junction, touring the ski resorts of Colorado, jumping in and out of beds and hot springs with naked strangers, and eating fresh peyote buttons that had the feel and texture of live frogs. Returning to the East Coast, John worked with a band named Terraplane, recorded at the House of Music in West Orange, and played in New Jersey at a bar called the Hainesburg Inn, where the owner went berserk and threw pool balls around the bar, John fell into the drum set and off the front of the stage all in one night.

The 80s marked the beginning of an extensive period of dedicated drug abuse, forestalling any creative efforts. John returned to an active pursuit of music in 1989 after moving to Minnesota. Since that time, he has worked extensively with a band and as a solo artist, performing at numerous bars, coffeehouses, weddings, funerals, and other sites where individuals gather to celebrate the delight and/or assuage the dread of the human experience.

Working with the cream of the Minnesota music scene, John released Larry's Road Trip in 1995. A quiet, acoustic folk/blues record released on John"s label, Shoshaura (named for his daughters Shoshana and Aura.)

In 1997, he released Grocery Store, "a more solidly thought-out piece that sears with a red-hot emotional iron, rambles like an old truck and spills over with stories of personal trials and tribulations." — Vickie Gilmer, St. Paul Pioneer Press

Since 1997, John has released four other albums:

Life Down Here - 1999
Alive and Alone - 2001
School of Life - 2001
Live at the Turf Club - 2001

An acoustic project is planned for the next release.

John's combination of original and traditional folk and blues continues to warm the ventricles of numerous citizens with nothing better to do. Check out the schedule on this site.

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