On The Record: Cory Wong on Prince, Vulfpeck & jam bands

In this interview, Corey Wong discusses his recent move to a bigger house in Minnesota and his plans to build a studio in his new space. He talks about his early days learning guitar, starting with a Traveling Wilburys Gretsch guitar and learning songs by bands like Nirvana, Green Day, and Rage Against the Machine. He also mentions using Ultimate Guitar to look up tabs and how tabs have been a valuable tool for him in his musical journey. Wong shares how his musical taste expanded from punk and grunge to include jazz and funk, influenced by his father's love for jazz music. He discusses his experience working with Wolfpack and how they have helped him find his unique voice as a musician. Wong also talks about his recent tour with a 12-man band and the challenges of making touring profitable. He mentions his upcoming album and collaborations, as well as the festivals and tours he has planned for 2023. Wong also touches on his signature strap with Fender and discusses John Mayer's Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Ultimate Guitar interview with the great Corey Wong, who looks like he's at home in the studio. We caught you at home. Yeah, I just moved recently, and what you're seeing is me unpacking enough to be able to record and do my job, and then just living in this, because I can work. I need to get it sorted, so sorry that you have to see this mess. Where'd you move to? Are you still in Minnesota? Yeah, I'm still in the Minneapolis area, Twin Cities area. All right. I'm about to leave. I got a bigger house. Needed a little more room. Good deal. Are you going to build your own studio there? Is that where you do a lot of your recording? I have a little studio space a couple miles from where I live. If I need to do an actual full-on studio session with my band, we go elsewhere. There's a nice big studio in Minneapolis that I use, but this space, I'm going to have it as a little rehearsal production suite. I'm going to build it out, do a little bit of action in here, and it'll be good. I know we have a lot to talk about today, but I always like to start at the beginning of the story. Yeah. I know you started out on bass, but I always like to ask, what was your first guitar, and what were some of the first songs you tried to learn? My very first guitar, I bought at a pawn shop. Now, I need to get one of these. I need to find one of these somewhere. I've seen them on reverb and whatever, but it was this old Traveling Wilburys Gretsch guitar. That was my first ever guitar. I bought it at a pawn shop for like $35. This thing, it's a decent guitar, honestly. It's a great Gretsch, but this particular one was not cared for, and it sucked. But it was enough for me to get moving, and then eventually I bought a blue Stratocaster, which a lot of people have known me to play for my entire career. But yes, the first songs that I learned, Come As You Are by Nirvana, that little riff. I learned the Beavis and Butthead theme song. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. When I Come Around by Green Day, Welcome to Paradise by Green Day. I learned, yeah, a lot of Green Day songs, a lot of Blink-182 songs, a lot of Nirvana. The very first guitar tab book I bought was Rage Against the Machine, Evil Empire. Okay, mind you, this is me with my traveling Wilbur Ease Gretsch plugged directly into like a 110 crate amp. So I'm reading the tabs, and I'm playing along with the record, and I'm like, I swear I'm doing this right, but it sounds nothing like the album. Like, oh, I don't have pedals. Oh, I can't get this sound unless I, you know, whatever. So I was pissed at guitar tabs for a while, because like, this sucks. I don't sound like Tom Morello. But then I realized, oh, there's like all this other stuff involved. So then I bought the Green Day Dookie Tab book, and then I bought the Red Hot Chili Peppers Blood Sugar Sex Magic Bass Tabs book and Guitar Tabs book, and I learned on both instruments, top to bottom. I learned note for note. I would play through the entire record on bass, then I'd play down the album on guitar. Next day, I'd do the same thing, same thing until I mastered it. And yeah, that just kind of relentless practicing was such a huge thing. And, you know, learning guitar tabs off the internet. That was, I mean, when I was growing up playing, it was kind of still early guitar tab websites, and, you know, there was varying degrees of good ones and bad ones. And, you know, now we have great ones. So it was a wonderful way to learn guitar as a kid to kind of be self-taught. I'll shamelessly ask, have you ever used Ultimate Guitar to look up tabs? Absolutely, absolutely. I've used Ultimate Guitar since I was a kid. I mean, even some days now, like, okay, I'm a professional musician, right? I got good ears, but also I don't have a ton of time. So sometimes I'm playing through something and I'll learn it and I'll learn it. I'm spending 30 minutes really going through something like, ah, what? There's one spot that's weird. Why is that weird? What is that? And I'll quick go to Ultimate Guitar. I'll go to Ultimate Tabs and be like, oh, okay, that's what it is. I'll find a five-star version and, you know, and just find it's like, oh, really? That's an A-flat? Okay, cool. Yeah. Because somebody else put in the four or five hours to learn it where I'm like, I want to learn this in 20 minutes. And, you know, I'll get there in 17 minutes aside from a few notes, depending on the song. Most of the time I can just hear it and get it. But certain songs, like, there's one little passage that's weird. What's going on there? What's the twist and turn? It's nice to be able to have sites, you know, even as a professional musician now to go back and use it. Yeah, and you went to school at McNally. You learned music theory. So it's cool to hear that even after learning music theory, tabs are still useful. Absolutely. I mean, that's the thing, man. Tabs have gone up and down as far as being en vogue or being taboo as something. But, like, if I'm going to be honest, tabs are what got me going. That was the catalyst to help me really figure stuff out. It's a much easier way. I mean, there's limitations to tabs if you don't see the rhythmic notation. That's the one hesitation with tabs is that a lot of times it's hard to get rhythmic notation. Of course, a lot of magazines have figured that out now. But with sheet music, it's like the open, the high open E string. There's several ways. You could play that six different, depending on how many frets you have. You could play that note. If you see it on standard notation, there's six ways to play that note on the guitar. You know, five very easy ways to play that note on the guitar. Depending on what you're playing, it's like, I could play it down here. I could play it up here. But with tabs, it just makes it very clear. It's like, this is what it is. And there's less thinking involved. And we all, as reading guitar players, know it's hard. It's a hard instrument to read on. And there's a reason why saxophone players are better at reading. It's like, there's one C sharp. OK, maybe there's some false fingerings. But you can assume that all of it is the exact, like, you're playing this note. And that's where it goes. You know, so guitar is hard. And that's why tabs are great, is because it's just going to tell you exactly where it is. So judging by the first songs that you learned, it seems like you started off in the punk and grunge, and where most of us started, the music that was popular back in that time. Yeah. What facilitated your move out of that box into things like jazz and funk and kind of the more experimental styles? My dad's a huge jazz fan. And when I was growing up, there was jazz around in the house all the time. And it wasn't just classic bebop jazz, that sort of thing. My dad was heavy into Jaco Pastorius, Weather Report, Mahavishnu Orchestra, all these different, as far as guitar players go, John Abercrombie, Ralph Towner, Scofield, Pat Martino, obviously Matheny, and those sort of things. But it's like most kids growing up didn't listen to Ralph Towner playing guitar, or even Scofield, for that matter. It's like you kind of had to have a certain type of parent or surrounding to be interested in that sort of thing or be exposed to that. So that stuff was around the house. And the records were in the house. The CDs were in the house when I was growing up. So I would listen to that sort of stuff with varying degrees of interest. I was always into Jaco and Weather Report. That stuff always was great to me. Scofield was great because of the grooves and that certain stuff. It took me a little longer to come around to, but I did always appreciate it. Then eventually, I mean, really getting to the kind of lineage to being really deep in it was the punk rock stuff, the Chili Peppers, Jamiroquai. Oh, wow. This is opening up. That first Maroon 5 record. Oh, wow. This is opening something new for me. Dave Matthews and John Mayer kind of introducing me to the sort of jam thing and then getting into certain bands that are kind of in the jam world, but also good songs. Some jam groups, I don't love the songs, but I like the music. But it felt like Mayer and actually even early Maroon 5. I saw Maroon 5 in 2005 or something, and they did like the Dave Matthews thing where they play a song and then it was just soloing for like six minutes after the song was over. It was dope. These guys were shredding, and I still like them now, I mean, as far as pop music goes, but it was just a different thing. So that kind of exposed me to like, oh, this kind of jamming world and then getting more interested in the other guitar players that are doing that. You got Schofield with the Uber Jam project, and then Schofield kind of draws people. He's a good gateway into more of the jazz thing. Bill Frizzell, Pat Metheny, those sort of things drew me in. Eventually, I got deep into jazz, wanted to be a jazz guy for a while, and, you know, just have kind of gone all over the place with it. For a lot of us that learn to play in our bedrooms or our home studios, and we really never played with other people or bands or in a jam format, what are some essential things that kids out there should learn in order to be able to be successful in a jam sort of an environment, playing with other people? I think the number one thing is listening. A lot of folks that I see at jam sessions are there to play the thing that they've been working on, or, oh, check out this thing that I can do. I want you all to see this thing that I can do. And I get that temptation. I've been there. I've been there. I still have that sometimes. If I've been working super hard at playing something, shedding something, you better believe I'm going to try to put it into my solos or something. But it has to be for a musical purpose. And the thing that I see at jam sessions, a lot of people go in there just wanting to play the thing that they've been working on. The most important thing is be a part, be present in the moment. Your thing that you've been working on might not fit over the thing that you're playing on right now. Try to acknowledge that. Listen, be aware of your surroundings. When is it your turn to say something? When is it your turn to contribute to the conversation? And when is it your turn to just lay in the cut and chill and just be in the thing? And the majority of the time, you're meant to just kind of hang in the thing. And I think a lot of people lose sight of that. And they'll just want to play all over everything. It's like, oh, here's my chance. And then they do it. So listen, be present in the moment, be aware of your surroundings, and respond to those. So many people just get tunnel vision going into jam sessions. Oh, here's what I'm doing. Here's what I came to do. I'm going to seek and destroy. What's the point? It's no longer fun for people. It's just like, oh, you came to show off? What's the point? Do that on your Instagram page. That's fine. Because that's just you. But we're here together. This is an interactive experience. And if people want to see a group of musicians jam very, very well, they should go see you live. They should go to Barbary's Super Jam. It's happening in, what, a month or so? How did that come together? Bonnaroo Super Jam is happening in the middle of the month here, I think on the 17th. So at Bonnaroo, my band Cory Wong is playing, and other band Wolfpack is playing. And they always do a super jam every year at Bonnaroo. It's kind of the most legendary super jam where they get, you know, Herbie Hancock has done it, Thundercat. You know, they have a lot of people. There's a great lineage of people who have hosted the super jam and put together sets for it. So they asked me to put together a set of music, a bunch of guests. It's going to be amazing. I've got everybody from Remy Wolf, Victor Wooten, guys in Wolfpack. So, I mean, there's tons. I don't even want to list them because I'm going to forget one person and feel bad about it later. But it's just insane. And some special guests have not been announced that are going to blow people's minds. It's one of those things where I've got a list of tunes here. It's like a funk jam, and I've got open sections for just in the moment things to happen. It's going to be amazing. Yeah, but they asked me. They knew I was going to be there with my thing and with Wolfpack. So they said, will you host this? I said, absolutely. So I'm stoked. It's going to be really fun. What sort of things have you learned from Wolfpack and working with them? And how have they impacted your career in terms of your style and your technique? You know, Jack absorbed me to being in the band maybe six years ago, became part of the band. And, you know, through that, when I had joined the band, I was really kind of searching for my voice, for my thing on the guitar. And I think being a part of that band has really helped me find my voice, find something unique that I do, and find a lane for myself in not even just on guitar, but in music. And that's something that was really great. And, you know, a lot of what I was playing before was with different artists that were single-track-minded or just into their own thing. But with Wolfpack, Jack has really tried to curate a band and a community of people where we can help each other find our thing. And through that band, you know, the encouragement and just like the conversations and the seeking of self has really helped me to find who I am as an individual on my instrument and as a musician. And just those conversations, music business, production, all this stuff. It's like we're always, it's just a constant think tank with that band. We're always trying to contribute something clever and interesting to the conversation, trying to, you know, not one-up each other, but to help elevate each other. So it's been really fun. And I recently watched a documentary about your recent tour where you went out with your 12-man band. And it led me to super fun videos, as always. Your production's always really fun and really great. So I encourage anybody to watch those videos. But it did lead me to thinking, do you have some advice for making touring viable in this day and age for a band that big? Guys going out there and doing it themselves with the big production like you did. You know, we hear a lot of bands talking about how difficult it is to make money touring. Did you find that to be a struggle and how did you overcome that? It is hard. At any level. It can be difficult. Well, I'll say that with a little bit of a caveat. I always want to put on the best show that I can, given the resources that I have. When I first started touring, I wanted to have this exact thing that I have now. I couldn't afford it. So at first, it was, all right, we're going to go out as a four-piece band. And we're going to do the thing. And we're going to do our best. And we're going to have a fun, entertaining show as a four-piece band. We can all fit in one car and drive around and do this thing. Minimal amount of gear. Then it was, all right, now we're fitting in a minivan. We can fit six of us in there. And I would do all the extra jobs, tour manager, driver, blah, blah, blah. I was handling all of that. And then eventually grew a little bit more. Okay, now we fit in kind of like a sprinter-size van. Have a little trailer. That sort of thing. And I eventually was able to make it grow. Where it's like, oh, yeah, we have two cars now that we're driving around. The horn section in one car. Everybody else in the other. And it's one of those things where I've just had to grow it piece by piece as it's gone. This last year is the first time that I brought out full production. Normally, it's just you use the house rig and make it work. This tour is the first one. It's finally like, okay, I get to bring out a lighting designer, a stage tech. And we have all that extra stuff. Bring out the full horn section. It's been really fun. And it's one of those things that touring is hard to make profitable. But you have to just be willing to do many jobs yourself until you can get there. I'm going to make sure that they feel good. Get a good rate and that everybody feels great about it. You're a busy guy. You've already got some releases in 2023. You got a single coming out today, which when this runs will have been in the past. But you got a new record coming out. What does 2023 have in store for you? I have a new album coming out. And I'm really excited about some great collaborations. And guitar playing wise, I feel like I've stepped into some different realms on this album that I haven't in the past. Most people know me as consummate rhythm guitar player. And that's what I am. I'm a rhythm guy. I love that role. But on this album, I play more guitar solos than any of my other albums. And I have a few solos on this record that I think are probably my best solos I've ever recorded, which obviously that feels really good. And a couple of them being just improvised in the studio solos, which to me are always the best ones that I come up with. They're just in the moment, feeling the thing. A bunch of festivals this summer, going to Europe, going to Asia, going to Hawaii, doing a residency in Hawaii. And then I'm doing a Europe tour in October, which will be fantastic. Yeah, a lot of really great stuff coming up. And the band is sounding as tight as ever. Best band's ever sounded. So it's really fun. Bullfeck has a handful of shows and a residency in New York later this year. Fearless Flyers have a couple of festivals and a New York residency in December. So it's good, really good. And you have a signature strap, which I'm a huge Fender guy. And so I was really excited to learn when your strap was coming out that you changed body dimensions, headstock dimensions. You did a lot of really subtle tweaks, kind of similar to what they did with the Silver Sky. So I was not what TRS did with the Silver Sky. We could talk about that. Yeah. How do you feel about the Silver Sky specifically? I think the Silver Sky is dope. I mean, I'm a Fender guy through and through, but you've got to give it up. That Silver Sky is dope. And speaking, I mean, it's funny that you mention that, because when I put my strap out, one of the first industry cats to message me about it was John Mayer. He goes, dude, how did you get Fender to do this? I was like, what do you mean? He's like, man, back when I was in Fender, and it's a different team of people at Fender now. So maybe and maybe this is why there's a different team of people. I can't speak to it. I love the cats that I'm working with at Fender. Fender is an amazing crew, amazing team. But he said to me, look, man, I wanted to make a lot of these exact things that you're talking about. I wanted to do stuff like this, really subtle changes. But I kind of wasn't allowed to at the time. The company wasn't doing that sort of thing at the time. How did you get them to do it? Because I wanted to make a lot of these things, and now I just did it over at PRS with the Silver Sky, which turned out to be great. It's exactly what he wants out of a guitar. I got exactly what I wanted out of the guitar. And I just told him, I said that these are the things that I want. And I talked to them about it. They probably learned their lesson, maybe, from Mayer asking for these things. And whoever was working at the time, if they weren't open to it, I understand why John maybe was upset. Or I don't know. I can't speak to any of that. But what I can say is, Nile Rodgers and I both had a hunch about just a little bit thinner body size, doing something for the way that the attack of the guitar happens. And they sent Nile a copy of his Hitmaker, his famous Hitmaker guitar. And he was like, it doesn't do the same thing. It's a little bit thicker than my guitar. They're like, wait, what? No, we did it. We specced it to the exact year of yours. And he brought his guitar in. They're like, oh, my gosh, this one just got sanded down a little more or something. Because they're hand sanded. And whoever was doing it just stayed on the instrument for 15 minutes longer than normal or something. So I was like, I'm not the only one. I'm not nuts about this. So Nile and I were both telling Fender the exact same thing. And Fender was like, OK, we'll do it. If Corey and Nile, the two rhythm cats, are saying that this is a thing that they're looking for out of a guitar to give the rhythm guitar thing, there's got to be something to it. And then we did the guitar. And Fender was like, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. This is great. Yeah, it's exciting moving forward knowing that they're willing to make those changes and willing to work with artists and have an artist-driven design process is really cool. So from your standpoint, I know an instrument's a very subjective thing. And we all have a relationship with a certain instrument. It would be naive to think that the design they had in 1954 is the perfect design. So if there are some design flaws from that 1954 Stratocaster, what would some of those be? And maybe they're evident in the design of your signature instrument. I mean, flaws, that's such a subjective thing. Like, look, Fender has changed a lot about the Strat over the years. That's the reality of it, too. It's like, come on, guys. It's not like you've never changed it. I mean, look at the 70s headstock versus the 60s headstock. Take a look at the guitars that were made in the 80s. Take a look at the made in Japan ones from the 90s, which are incredible guitars. And there's all these different iterations of the Strat, some of the curves being a little bit different on the headstock, some of the fonts being a little different. Some of the curves of the body being a little bit different or, you know, the contours of the body. I think what helped me find some of the things that were much more user-friendly now is like the way that the butt of the guitar, when your hand goes all the way up the neck, it's more of a contoured thing now rather than just squared off. It's just much easier to fit your hand in there to reach the higher frets on my guitar. And the curvature of my, the contour of my guitar, it just sits much easier in the body. The contour of the neck and the contoured radius of the fretboard helps it to stay in tune better than the original design. So the intonation of the guitar, the way that I have it now is much better. The tuners that I'm using, that I put on my Signature Strat hold the guitar in tune much better. The shape of the neck, to me, that's a personal preference thing, of course. But for me, it's a little easier to get around. It's a faster neck than a lot of other Strats that I've played. So those are some of the things, the features that I wanted to put on my Signature Strat that it's like these are functional reasons why I want it to be this way. I can play faster. I can play more clean and effortless. And it sits more comfortably in my body to play it for hours on end. Now, because you're from Minnesota, and I'm from Minnesota, I feel like we're obligated to address the, have you ever jammed with Prince? Did you ever meet Prince? I know you have a lot of people in your band who did play with Prince. The majority of my band is Prince alumni. And some of us, my friends and I that are my generation, we grew up playing under these guys. Prince would come out and see us play. So I had this weekly gig, and Prince came out a handful of times. And the first time that I met Prince in person, he came out to this club, Bunkers, and I was playing. And this is after I had kind of discovered my voice a little bit. I had been playing with Wolfpack for a little while and been exploring the sound of kind of what people know as the Corey Wong thing, quote, unquote, now. I kind of had a handle on it. It was like the first phase of having that sort of sound and feel, identity. And after the set, one of his handlers, one of his bodyguards came up and was like, hey, Prince wants to say hi. So I came up and was like, hey, man, nice to meet you. And he, in the way that Prince does, said that, you know, you've got an amazing sound. You've got a unique sound. It's incredible. Keep doing what you're doing. You're an incredible guitar player, but you have a sound. You have a thing. And it's incredible. And that, to me, anytime I'm really feeling down now, I just kind of think back to that. You know what? Prince gave me that seal of approval for my thing. And, you know, that's one of the things that we as guitar players struggle so much to do is find a unique sound and a unique thing. Some of us might find it, but also, is it something that is also magnetic and that people like, you know? And for me to be doing something that's in the funk realm and to have Prince say that it's unique and cool and incredible, I'll carry that with me. To the end. So I really appreciate you taking so much time to chat with us today. Yeah. Thanks for having me. We have a lot of kids who come to the site looking up tabs as maybe you did when you were learning to play. Do you have any advice to that kid? Or if you could travel back in time and give yourself advice from back in the day, if you could hop in a time machine, give young Corey Wong some advice. When you're learning songs, don't just stop at the notes and rhythms. Don't just stop at, oh, this is some sort of overdriven sound tone. Try to dive deep into the nuances. Try to dive deep into the things that really make something musical. There's a difference between being able to play the notes and rhythms and really being able to play music. You can teach a machine to play the exact notes and rhythms, but what makes something connect and what makes something unique and human is all those little nuances that get put into it. Think about the releases of the notes. When does somebody release the note? How are they attacking the notes? Is it all downstrokes? Is it alternate picking? Get into all those details. And those details, when you dive into the details, it's really going to help you understand the guitar part in a deeper way. It's going to help you understand the approach of this guitar player in a specific way. And then don't stop there at just learning the guitar parts and the nuances of the guitar parts. Think about how it relates to the chords that are being played. Think about how it relates to the melodies. Don't just learn the guitar parts to learn the guitar parts. Is this guitar part just these two notes or is it kind of outlining a C minor chord? Try to figure that out. Figure out how the parts relate to the music that's happening and the context around it. And that way it'll help you not only understand the part itself better, but it will help you to understand how to create great guitar parts when it comes time for you to do so. Excellent advice. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for being such an inspirational guitar player. Every time I listen to one of your songs, I always like to find the nearest guitar and try to play different rhythms and stuff. It's really cool. So thank you for being so inspiring. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And thank you for adjusting the strat and adding some of the nuances that a lot of us have been wanting for a long time.