The Whips’ Max Cooper III steps out on his own with The Overthinker

Max Cooper III. // Photo by Earl Richardson

If you’ve seen the young Lawrence funk band The Whips, you’ve seen Max Cooper III holding down the keys on stage. While the group’s other Max, Max Indiveri, has released a slew of solo material over the past few years, Cooper’s new EP, The Overthinker, marks his debut as a solo artist.

Well, kind of. His TikTok account, mrpianoman, has over 800,000 followers, and he regularly gets thousands of views on his videos over on YouTube. Those songs, however, see Cooper taking his piano skills and applying them to everything from football themes to movie studio intros to Naruto. The new EP is all original music, with Cooper on piano and vocals, and a murderer’s row of talent behind him in the studio, including Michael Hamm on guitar, Brandon Graves on drums, Brian Quinn and Tim Marks on bass, Dave Sinko engineering, and Al Berman producing.

Ahead of the release of The Overthinker on Friday, Feb. 28, we spoke with Max Cooper III to talk about how the new EP came to.

The Pitch: What’s made you step out and record this EP?

Max Cooper III: I wrote a lot of stuff for The Whips, and they have their own certain vibe and feel, but then I was starting to write stuff where I was like, “Well, this sounds more like it’s me. Everything that I wrote on this new EP that’s coming out—they’re very personal stories—stories from my whole life, really—and I just feel like that wouldn’t really fit a band.

I was like, “I really want to show people who I am, what I’ve gone through, and I know they’d be able to connect with me on that level.”

What was it like, working with a different group of people, after having collaborated with the same group of fellas for a long time?

It’s super interesting, because working with The Whips, they’re a bunch of these guys my age, and we’re all on a similar level, music wise. They’re some of my best friends, so we could take things not as seriously, but when it comes to these professional musicians who’ve been doing this for years and years, it’s so cool because, in a way, I’m learning a lot of stuff from them because they’re these really great musicians where they’re bringing their own thing to the EP. They’re just such awesome guys.

Everybody puts in their bio that they’re wide-ranging in terms of influences, but your YouTube channel really demonstrates that, just in terms of everything. From covering Naruto stuff to the NFL sports themes and Elton John, it really does sort of demonstrate your wide-ranging interests. How do you narrow all that down to make an EP and decide how you want this to be?

Everything you just mentioned—Those are all inspirations on how I arranged the music. One thing that I love about anime is the complex arrangements in everything. They include strings and horns and all these instruments. When I was writing the arrangement for this EP, I was thinking to these soundtracks from movies and video games and anime, which is very interesting.

I just love the complexity of these arrangements that you don’t hear a lot in pop music, like a lot of classical elements in these things. And when it comes to writing the strings and like even some of the piano lines, these things that are definitely inspired by classical music, as well.

Your announcement video for the EP was shot on stage at the Lied Center. How did that come to be? It looks very impressive, as opposed to just in an office somewhere.

The cool thing about the Lied Center is I’ve played a lot of shows with KU big bands there. I’ve played in the KU jazz band. I’m just so used to playing on a stage because of my classical background. I played on the Lied Center many times at some music festivals. We wanted to get a feel for this—like, a guy who’s playing pop music and releasing new music, and we want you to take him seriously. He knows what he’s doing, and with this background, I feel like people will take it a bit more seriously, like, “Okay, this guy means business.”

If it was just in an office, like you said, me just sitting in my studio chair, like, “What’s up, guys? I’m starting to release my own stuff. How’s it going?” I feel like just getting a giant auditorium and a massive stage, people are just like, “This guy knows what he’s doing. I want to listen to his music.”

You’re playing your songs on that stage as part of that video. What’s it like getting to hear your music outside of the studio or a smaller venue, in very professional, high class space?

To play on a stage like that on such a nice piano—a Steinway—in a way, it makes you play better. I don’t know how to explain it, but whenever you play on such a nice instrument in such a nice room with amazing acoustics, you can just hear everything. I feel like I could hear the whole band with just the piano playing on stage.

It’s such a crazy experience, especially when you’re just by yourself. You can just play whatever you want. You’re not having this huge crowd making you feel a bit nervous. The feeling is just awesome. You feel like you can just play whatever you want. Go crazy, I guess.

Did you throw in anything just to see what it would sound, aside from your own music?

You know I threw in some Mario video game stuff in there. That’s just what I love to do.

Has the process of recording and putting together this EP affected how you’re writing your new material at all?

When I used to write music, I used to write it only having the piano in mind. I was writing on the piano. I was like, “This is how the piano’s gonna sound,” but I had no drums or guitar or anything else in my head. But when I was writing this whole EP, I was like, “I want this to be legitimate. I want this to sound like there’s a full band,” and it was the whole band in mind when I was writing this.

I wrote “Charades”—That just came out on the guitar when I came up with the line. But that line I came up with on the guitar because I wanted to write everything else around that, so, yes, definitely recording in a studio changed my writing process a lot because I wanted there to be a band feel. I wanted you to bop your head to some cool drums because I just want people to be able to dance, but also I want them to know that there’s a great message behind each song at the same time.

Max Cooper III’s The Overthinker is set to release on Friday, Feb. 28.