Digging Deeper – Cory Wong

You guys ready to have a good time tonight, or what?

We’re feeling loose, it’s the weekend, we’re having a good time. You having a good time? This is just the right level of excitement we’re looking for.

You ready to hear some diminished chords? You ready to hear some pentatonic scale? What if we harmonize it?

– Cory Wong, Live at First Avenue

Welcome back to Digging Deeper the series of posts where I go into a thing (a genre of music, a band, a book, a genre of film, an actor, whatever) and really get into it, explaining it, giving examples, and showing you why I enjoy that particular thing in its many facets.

All right, look I have this standard intro for these but three weeks in a row and even I have to admit it needs a bit of a breaking up to say hi, no really, just bear with it a moment longer. I promise next week won’t be a Digging Deeper. But back to the normal intro.

Do remember I in no way claim to be an expert and I am sure there are a ton of resources that can, and will, go into greater detail than I can here. Consider these a good starting point in your journey. And as always please let me know and feel free to give me ideas of things you’d like to see me dig into.

Building off of last weeks post about Vulfpeck, which built off the Funk post before it, this week we finish out funk month with a closer look at Cory Wong.

Quickly, let’s hit some biographical highlights: Growing up in Minneapolis, Wong always loved music and started playing bass in a band early in around High School. Going from there, with music as his passion, Wong went to both U of Minnesota and the McNally Smith College of Music , ending up focusing on jazz through the early decade of the millennium.

In 2013, though, not only was Wong playing Dr. Mambo’s Combo, playing funk rhythm guitar, but it would also be the year he met the members of Vulfpeck.

Now that that’s out of the way we can really get to the heart of the matter, which is that Cory Wong always seems to be having the best time of his life. At all times.

Is it a trick of the light, a performer’s touch, careful moderation of a presence? I mean I am sure there’s a bit of that, but I am also very sure that Wong knows no joy as much as playing, live, with people he respects, and admires. And he’s built his life around that.

Watch him on stage with his current band, The Wongnotes, as they play a song (feat. Victor Wooten)

You’ll notice, quickly, how Wong is constantly looking around the stage and checking in on everyone. Making sure people are ready for the next section, to take or end a solo, and so on. But he is also smiling. Many of the players are.

They’re enjoying what they do, and you can feel it in the music. When the horn section take turns at solos you can see them grinning and just enjoying each other’s playing, even as Wong and company look on, grinning from every corner of the stage.

I’m telling you, every live performance is like that. Just a bunch of musicians who are all stone-cold professionals and ready to pick up a line after a complex solo, and put their all into it because they love what they do.

So many of the songs, instrumental or not are such incredible work as so many of the tracks Wong writes and co-writes are jazz funk that layers in jam funk tendencies, blurring the line between all out playful jam and structured orchestration.
Wong’s love of ultra-clean and dry tones in instruments serves the music well. He is leading the band as the rhythm guitar player, something not many people do (Nile Rogers famously also did, of course).

When Wong does go for a solo line, often still using the same ultra-clean tone, it is thoughtful, with plenty of space and movement to it, telling a story, before diving back into the song’s throughline, held down by his own rhythm guitar.
You can also hear him, live, being a band leader. He’s there, playing, but also being an active listener as he always is when performing, calling out key changes as well as calling for various solos and sections to take the lead. You can hear him on the recording of Welcome 2 Minneapolis off his Live at First Avenue release, doing all of that, as smoothly as anything.
I should stop a second and dig into his current band, The Wongnotes. It’s not a small group so hold on.

The Wongnotes are: Cory Wong on guitar, Petar Janjic on drums, Sonny T. on bass, Nêgah Santos on percussion, Kevin Gastonguay on keys, Eddie Barbash on sax, Kenni Holmen on sax & flute, Sam Greenfield on sax & clarinet, Steve Strand on trumpet, Jon Lampley on trumpet, and Michael Nelson on trombone (also doing horn arrangements)

That’s a lot of moving pieces to track on stage, but Wong manages it deftly. He also jokes with the band, on stage, and makes the whole thing feel like a bunch of friends that just want to play together, and happen to be on a stage, or recording.
A lot of this is easily viewable at his YouTube page where he uploads fairly constantly – from live clips, to whole shows, sometimes there’s a cartoon series running, a series called On The One where he details producing various tracks, band Q&As (which are hysterical) as well as two seasons of “Cory and the Wongnotes“, his variety show where he drops a tune, recorded for whatever album is coming next as well as an interview and skits.

It’s a truly impressive amount of content, but all of it reinforces one simple idea – this is a man who loves what he does and loves sharing it.

Finding someone who is any one of these things: Great player, composer, or band leader, can be hard. Finding someone who is all three is stupidly rare. But Cory Wong lives there, and is always playing with the biggest smile on his face as he does it.

You can find his Bandcamp page here but also consider following his YouTube channel as well for a bunch of shenanigans and music.

Go explore some Cory Wong, because, frankly, you deserve it.