Rusty Cooley was born in Houston, TX. Rusty received his first guitar setup, a Peavey T27 guitar and a Peavey Decade amp, on his fifteenth birthday. From that day on Cooley immersed himself in music; always practicing around 4 hours a day. Rusty would take guitar lessons for quite some time till he became dissatisfied with local guitar instructors and decided to become self-taught. He mainly relied on instructional books and videos.
In 1997 Rusty formed the progressive metal band Outworld, who allegedly got their name from the Mortal Kombat video games, but they recently disbanded.
After high school Rusty attended a local college which he studied music theory. Rusty became unsatisfied with his local musicians, which he then began to work on solo music in early 1996. He also began exclusively playing 7-string guitars at this time. His debut solo album, “Rusty Cooley”, was released in 2003 through Lion Music.
Rusty recently collaborated with Pro Tone Pedals which they were testing the Jason Becker Perpetual Burn Signature Distortion Pedal, because Jason himself accumulated ALS, so he can no longer play the guitar. Pro Tone Pedals has posted several videos of Rusty, which he is testing prototypes of the pedal on YouTube; In which Rusty commented Jason was one of this biggest influences in guitar. Recently Pro Tone has been working on a Rusty Cooley Signature pedal. Rusty has also released his signature 7-string model with Dean.
Rusty has been a instructing guitar lessons since his third year of playing guitar. He has released five instructional products, wrote lessons for magazines, and posted many lessons on websites all over. He has taught for the National Guitar Workshop 1996 – 1998 and has also given many clinics. Currently Rusty is endorsed by Dean Guitars, EMG Pickups, Morley Pedals, GHS strings, VHT, Rocktron, Eventide, Maxon, and more recently Peavey amplification. He was previously endorsed by Jackson Guitars and Ibanez Guitars. His Signature Dean Model was released at NAMM in early 2007.