CORY WONG

If you haven’t experienced Cory Wong’s amazingly funky rhythm style with the bands Vulfpeck and The Fearless Flyers, we’d invite you to check out the video Introducing The Fearless Flyers on YouTube before reading any further. It’s okay, we’ll wait…

- David Mead

Cory was first exposed to music by his father who would constantly play records around the house. Although not a musician himself, his father was what his son described as “a total music freak… a music head”. So Cory’s formative years were played out against a soundtrack provided by players such as Hendrix, Joe Pass, Pat Metheny, and Ralph Towner. “My dad had all this ECM catalogue and CTI jazz catalogue, the Blue Note catalogue and then he had all this classic rock catalogue,” he tells us, having travelled over to Guitarist’s HQ on a rain-soaked day following his sold-out gig in Bristol.

A great deal of the music he had heard courtesy of his dad was guitar-driven and the young Cory was “interested in the sound, interested in what it did to me emotionally, how music made me feel”. He became curious about rhythm playing and, through the intense metronome-based practice routine that he outlines for us in the video that accompanies this feature and the tutorial that follows, he gained the ability to lock in with a rhythm section with scary precision.

As well as playing with Vulfpeck and The Fearless Flyers, Cory has produced a series of solo albums, the latest of which is Live in Amsterdam. A much-in-demand musician, with a relentless touring schedule, Cory might also have been spotted by the eagle-eyed in the house band on Stephen Colbert’s late-night US TV chat show.

During our pre-interview chat Cory revealed that guitar wasn’t his first choice as an instrumentalist: “I actually started on bass. Bass was my first instrument…”

So, what exactly was it that persuaded you to switch from four strings to six?