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Saturday 25 November 2023

Cory Branan

Discover more in Memphis

3210 Old Hernando Road 38116 Memphis, TN, US (901) 509-2352 www.worldfamoushernandoshideaway.com/

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Doors open: 19:00

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• October 17, 2022

Cory Branan Works With A Big Canvas For ‘When I Go I Ghost’ (INTERVIEW)

Photo Credit: Jamie Harmon

• By Hannah Means-Shannon
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Cory Branan released his new album, When I Go I Ghost , via Blue Elan on October 14 th , as his first with that label. As ever, Branan stands at that crossroads of being a singer-songwriter and a genre-blind composer of albums, and the latest collection brings traditions together in such a finely crafted way, you’d have a hard time identifying their constituent elements. Another very entertaining choice on the album is combining some more solemn reflections and storytelling with emotive, high-energy movement in the music, which often seems to suggest that nothing is ever totally what it seems to be. 

Cory Branan is joined on the album by Producer Jeremy Ferguson, drummer Eric Slick, bassist Robbie Crowell, Jarrad K on various keys and synthesizer, and Anthony da Costa on guitars and vocal harmonies. Together, they created an expansive, multi-layered sound that suggests the larger vistas that the restlessness and wanderlust of the album seeks out. I spoke to Cory Branan at a time when he was temporarily grounded by covid, but soon to hit the road for a slew of tour dates coming up. It was a conversation taking in a number of interesting dualities, including his crafting of studio songs versus his live performance life, his early inclinations towards both Metal and Country, and the dualities we find even in the songs of When I Go I Ghost . 

Hannah Means-Shannon: You’ve been on the road a lot and you have a bunch more touring coming up. No trace of the famed “2022 Burnout” I keep hearing about? 

Cory Branan: Oh, no. I toured earlier in the year, and did an early winter and a spring tour, so I actually have had a lot of the summer off, so I’m champing at the bit and ready to go. During covid, I have kids, so I had to hustle, so I learned how to record at the house, and I put out five cover projects that I recorded here. Whatever people requested, I’d do it. That downtime that everybody had was actually a lot of work for me. 

HMS: I get the generally impression that the sound on this album is actually bigger and more layered than your other recent work, so it’s not even a basic album. You went all-out. 

CB: I always hear the songs fleshed out. If I hear it, and it’s just me and a guitar, then I’ll record it like that. I’ve got some songs and records like that. The size of the record is actually a really interesting thing. I wanted everything to be to scale and have the instruments sound like the instruments. So I really emphasized that I wanted dry, 1970s drums. Conversely, the drums are actually tighter, and it leaves room for other things. It ends up sounding bigger. I thought that Jeremy Ferguson, the Producer, just crushed it, and of course, having Eric Slick on drums didn’t hurt!

HMS: I hear what you’re talking about. The instruments are all very distinct and you could probably hear all the parts from very far away. 

CB: That’s all Jeremy! I don’t have a lot of rules for making an album, but I do all the planning and arrangements to the Nth degree, all in my head, then I get in there with really great and underprepared musicians. Hopefully we capture stuff. Jeremy is almost like a musician on that board. As we were cutting it, we’d go in and listen, and it sounded mixed already. His sonic choices made it look effortless. He makes choices on the floor, which is old-school. These days with Pro Tools, everyone fixes it later. It’s really satisfying. 

HMS: Is live performance something you think about before recording?

CB: Never. I’m almost willful about it. Just to be able to have a career in this day and age, I tour solo 90% of the time. I’ll piece a band together for festival stuff but mostly I’m a solo artist. For me, the live show is one thing and I just hear these songs certain ways. 

HMS: So the album is the real canvas for you?

CB: That’s what I like and I appreciate it. To be able to do this so long solo, I do have a thing that I do acoustically, but it’s very hard to capture because it’s temporal and it involves the room. It involves everything that’s happening right there disappearing. When you hear a recording of some shows, you can get a sense of it, but with my shows, you’d ask, “Why is this redneck yelling and then whispering?” [Laughs] 

There’s interplay with the room that happens and it just doesn’t translate. In general, there’s something intangible about live music. I always court that. For my live shows, I’ve never made a setlist. I’ve never planned anything. I like to risk something, I guess. I’m not that interested in myself, so I have to stay interested in the music and the show. I like variables and the different potentials of things. So I play those songs differently all the time. I have more musical ambitions with an album.

HMS: For some musicians, live shows seem more like a theater performance where you have to keep that connection with the audience.

CB: There’s a palpable push and pull, like spinning plates in the air. I’ve never phoned in a show in my life and it’s a point of pride. That’s my only work aesthetic from my blue-collar background. 

HMS: You seem to have always been someone who navigated many genres, and this album takes that to the next level, I feel. The genres are broken down so finely that you can’t find the edges. Did that way of thinking have a starting point for you or has it always been like that?

CB: It’s always been like that for me as a listener. I think that it comes from growing up in Mississippi and I grew up with traditional music, church music, Country, Bluegrass, and Blues. I also grew up with MTV though, as a suburb rat. We didn’t have record stores. Pop radio was glorious in 1984, but all the other music came piecemeal. I had a guy down the street who turned me on to Minor Threat and Iron Maiden. Everything came at you. MTV just opened things up. Nothing sounded alike. 

As things went on, and we had more information coming at us, things start to break down. You get your Becks, and things that are more like “blender music”. It’s almost as if everything is remixed in their head before it even comes out. Society got more fractured like that, too. I respond to that, I guess. I try not to overthink this stuff too much because I like to try to hold onto the little magic that I can find in my life and leave it the fuck alone! 

HMS: Absolutely. I’ve also been wondering if kids have to be told not to like things. I think if you can take that out of the equation, the way someone looks at music might turn out pretty differently. I very much agree about MTV and that had a shocking impact because whatever comes on next, you’re going to watch it. 

CB: There were times where I only listened to one thing, since I was a Metal guitarist, but even then, that wasn’t totally true. I listened to George Jones when I was listening to Sepultura. I played in a Country band when I was playing in a Metal band.

HMS: Wow! That’s awesome.

CB: I have played guitar since I was 13 and I was an axe-swinger. I’d pick up Country gigs with my Metal guitar. I don’t think there were times in my life where I said, “This is the only thing for me.” There were focus periods once I did start writing songs in my 20s. I somehow missed the whole John Prine, Joni Mitchell thing until then, so I went to school at the shrine of some of the great songwriters. During that time, I might not have listened to anything with drums. I’d just keep finding things.

HMS: How did you pick which songs went on this record?

CB: I usually have a stack because it takes so long to record. They stack up. I immediately play them. People will know these songs. There are only three or four on this record that I haven’t played. The live thing changes how I feel about songs. It doesn’t usually change the lyric, but it will alter my vision of where the song’s strengths and weaknesses are. Also, since I don’t ever play the songs the same way live, it’ll make me think, “Maybe I should play it like this in the studio.” For a song like “Angels in the Details”, it was almost a Blues song as I wrote it. I tend to stay away from Blues because it’s kind of sacred, but it’s a Blues form. I kept it nebulous until we were in the studio, and then when Eric played the drums, I said, “Yep! That’s it!” I try to keep things open until I get into the studio.

HMS: Was audience reaction the main thing that impacted your choice?

CB: Thematically, there are some things that play on this record, and some songs seem kin to each other, so that was part of it, too. Some people who have been hearing me live may be upset at some songs that I didn’t put on this record. We also held back three tracks to make it fit on vinyl. Some songs don’t help the flow of the record, and I like a record to move a certain way, so I took some time with that. When I asked opinions about that at Blue Elan, they were forthcoming and engaged, and that was refreshing. 

HMS: I have to ask you about “When In Rome, When In Memphis” because I live in New Jersey and I grew up partly in Memphis, so I’m getting a lot of those place references. It’s a really fun song, and of course, in there, we get the album title, “when I go I ghost”.

CB: Yes, I put that in later. It’s rhythmic, it’s almost like a nursery rhyme the way that I say it, and it fit, thematically. There’s a lot of hesitancy and wanderlust to the album, and restlessness. It also happens to be true because I’m terrible socially. I’ll be somewhere and I’ll just have to leave. The song itself is one that I actually wrote in Jersey on tour. 

The gist of it is that someone is saying that they are fine anywhere and doesn’t need home because he has this memory. But he’s also lying to himself, because he goes on to elaborate that it’s just a memory. But it’s a simple banger of a tune, which I don’t want to clutter, so people don’t have to think of it like that. For me, it’s all there. I picked loaded places, like Asbury Park, and Memphis, which are as loaded as Rome, but there are also references to other places to balance things out. 

HMS: For me, that also taps into music tradition and even the American obsession with road trips and travel by car. We get both of those in one song, which brings a lot of energy.

CB: Ideally, that’s what you want. One of the only other rules I had for this record was that the sadder the song was, the more I wanted it to groove or move. So the more emotional it was, or the more intellectual in places, the more it needed to be body music to balance things. 

So one song that was pretty autobiographical, “That Look I Lost”, ends up getting the Motown treatment. It’s one of those things that a lot of old Soul music, like a lot of Blues, is so sad that it’s comforting, in a way. So you have this triumphant thing undercutting the sadness. I’ve always loved that when it happens in music, so that was a decision here. 

HMS: One thing that happens when songs have subject matter that’s one way, and music that’s another, is you almost feel like you’re considering or looking at opposites and that experience makes you see them differently.

CB: Absolutely, it’s almost a dialectic that the song has with itself. Sometimes I have the character do that. I like to have music juxtaposed as opposed to supporting the theme. Randy Newman, a favorite of mine, is really good at it, or even John Prine. He has that midwestern, droll, comic lightness, and he plays these dark lyrics against that a lot. That’s an appealing juxtaposition for me. 

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Cory Branan Concert Setlists & Tour Dates

Cory branan at 013 next, tilburg, netherlands.

• Angels in the Details
• Prettiest Waitress in Memphis
• Tall Green Grass
• When I Leave Here
• Survivor Blues
• Pocket of God
• When in Rome, When in Memphis
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Cory Branan at FZW, Dortmund, Germany

Cory branan at substage, karlsruhe, germany, cory branan at dynamo, zurich, switzerland, cory branan at garage, saarbrücken, germany.

• Mexican Home

Cory Branan at Neue Theaterfabrik, Munich, Germany

• The Prettiest Waitress in Memphis

Cory Branan at Szene, Vienna, Austria

Cory branan at futurum, prague, czechia, cory branan at conne island, leipzig, germany, cory branan at kulturladen, konstanz, germany.

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• Tall Green Grass ( 61 )
• The Prettiest Waitress in Memphis ( 59 )
• Survivor Blues ( 56 )
• The Corner ( 47 )
• Sour Mash ( 37 )

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John Allen Tyler Childers Dashboard Confessional Chuck Ragan Taking Back Sunday Frank Turner Twin Forks

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Leonard Cohen Roger Harvey John Lee Hooker Alan Menken Roger Miller John Prine Thin Lizzy Richard Thompson Tom Waits Gillian Welch Townes van Zandt

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Cory Branan

More about this event, artist profile | cory branan.

“I pulled these songs from a batch of fifty that mostly predate the pandemic, and all of these felt kin. They’re about doubt, loss, depression, general stir-craziness.

“But I knew I didn’t want to make a record that pondered itself, I wanted it to have motion, so I gave this record an overarching rule: The sadder the song, the more it had to move and groove. That’s how the country weeper  ‘That Look I Lost’  got the Motown treatment. I wanted you to nod along, then after listening ask, Wait, what am I shaking my ass to?”

When I Go I Ghost  is Cory Branan’s sixth full length release. His first was 20 years ago: He ain’t  banging out pulp here.  A writer’s writer, Cory’s lines grip like a page-turner, giddy with interior rhyming and wordplay:

I took a shower but the shower didn’t take – “O’ Charlene”

the kinda wreck I recognize – “C’Mon If You Wanna Come”

You post a picture, notice the mixture The camera captures That ‘before and after’ look in your eye – “C’Mon If You Wanna Come”

When she’s staring down the bad end of the barrel Of yet another long and loaded night – “That Look I Lost”

One propulsive song that jangles with hope is  “Come On If You Wanna Come,”  with lyrics about being too depressed – maybe too hungover – to venture out, accompanied by music that catches the buoyancy one feels after recovering. “’Come On’ is about as optimistic as I can get. We did all the fun Simmons 1980’s drum samples on there, and added concert toms, putting reverse gated reverb on the drums – an old ‘80s Cars-era trick. There’s Rickenbacker and a 12 string guitar. It’s a respite in the record. It evokes the Traveling Wilbury’s, though maybe a meth-y Wilburys.”

Cory’s stories don’t resolve neatly. “I embrace my fluctuating doubt. The way I write, I feel my way through these dark halls and then realize, Oh, this is how the house is shaped.”

Like a novelist, he inhabits the minds and hearts of his creations, much as they inhabit him. “I’m interested in characters at a crossroads, getting in the flux and staying there. In  ‘Of Two Minds,’  I got this feel for the lead character and I asked myself, Who else is in the room with her? Then I realized – she’s the other character too! And by the end, I found myself so wholly identifying that I realized she’s also me.” First she says, “I’m gonna quit while I’m behind,” but in a later verse it’s: “I double down when I’m behind.” Flux indeed, just like real life. That song also features this stinger: “Set the pistol on the dresser and the bed on fire.”

On “Pocket of God,”  he’s created a noir movie. “I tried to get as much of a story as I could in there, with someone in the hot seat. You don’t know who he’s singing to until the end, and it’s a s story of what happened to someone he cared deeply about. That song began as a sweet line about somebody thinking he picked the pocket of God to have met someone, and I thought, That’s too Hallmark, so I tried to balance it with a Raymond Carver sensibility, where definitions aren’t the same for everyone, where the narrator is untrustworthy. I’m a big fan of Randy Newman, the songwriter king of untrustworthy narrators. And this song is an exception on the album in that I didn’t try to counteract the dark lyrics with brighter music. I stayed there, I painted an open void, then kept the music staring right there with me. The string arrangement helps with that – put the headphones on to hear the ear candy in those layered strings from  Matt Combs!  (Combs is the staff fiddler and mandolinist for The Grand Ole Opry.) And that’s  Spencer Cullum  (Steelism) on steel guitar holding drone notes through the whole thing, and he’s also on ‘O Charlene,’ ‘Room 101’, and he plays lap steel on ‘When In Rome.’”Cory approaches songwriting with a combination of self-abnegation and the hyper-critical. “I try to not exist when I’m writing. I write with a magnet, or a divining rod. Then when I’m editing I go in with a scalpel. I try not to look for certainties, I try not to get dogmatic, and all my hope is qualified, highly qualified.”

To parse his emotions, Cory stirs himself with motion. “When I write I usually don’t sit down. Plus I’m on the road a lot, 130, 140 shows a year. But I didn’t write on the road until recently when I learned to get up in the morning and free associate. I look around the motel room, see what it reminds me of, and if I do that before I start driving, then I’ve opened myself up to write in the car. A lot of this record revolves around motion and stasis—should I stay or should I go?”

Though many of the songs are about love predicaments, Cory steers strongly away from the autobiographical – despite a recent divorce. “‘Folks want to treat singer-songwriters as diaries but I’m not really into the self-mythologizing. I don’t write confessional stuff. I don’t find much inspiration in myself. We aren’t the bickering couple on ‘One Happy New Year,’ she isn’t the quasi-alcoholic mess in the venomous ‘When I Leave Here.’ I don’t think there’s any chance of folks mistaking me and her for the murdering drug dealer and thieving prostitute in ‘Pocket of God,’ – but there are plenty other songs they can misread into.”

The autobiographical elements that slip through deal with the mental health of his characters, “Room 101” and “Angels in the Details” in particular. “I’ve been recently diagnosed as manic-depressive, and I had to figure out how to talk about that.  ‘Room 101’  is me trying to get a little more verbal about it. There’s a nosedive, but I pull out of it.” In terms of biography, “’That Look I Lost’ is the only relationship song that’s autobiographical, and  ‘Son of Mine’  has some of me in it.”

“When In Rome” was written far from where Memphis meets Mississippi, where the rural sensibility meets the urban aesthetic, where Cory was raised. But he felt the pull, and also the aura of a great American songwriter. “I wrote  ‘When In Rome’  while driving through Jersey. It came out of one drive. Sometimes the songs are little pieces that linger around and I’ll Frankenstein them together, but a lot of these came out like deer, already standing up.” He laughs. “And I did pick loaded cities to reference. You can’t be more loaded than Memphis and Asbury Park. It reminded me of Guy Clark equating the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s David and Doc Watson.” For the sound, “It was so hard to stay away from Springsteen’s E Street Band sound when we were doing that song. But  Eric Slick , the drummer, made it work. He’s in Dr. Dog. I wanted a drummer who didn’t come from roots music. Eric was versatile and fantastic. He attacked this one like Keith Moon from the Who.”

Cory assembled the band with an ear toward the 1980s radio and MTV he was raised on. “If you look at the pop charts from ‘79 to ‘85, you can’t find two bands that sound the same.” That’s why  When I Go I Ghost  sounds like the spin of an old radio dial in a brand new car. “I find that over-qualified and under-prepared can create lightning in the bottle.” In addition to his expected vocal, guitar and songwriting talents, Cory now adds synth playing, something he learned during the pandemic.

The core band, in addition to drummer Eric Slick, is bassist  Robbie Crowell  (Deer Tick, Midland), who also played on Cory’s previous album  Adios ;  Jarrad K , who produced Ruston Kelly and can play anything, and here is on various keys and synthesizer; and the in-demand  Anthony da Costa  on guitars and vocal harmonies. The album was recorded mostly in Nashville at Battle Tapes with producer and Grammy-winning engineer  Jeremy Ferguson . “We went back to Memphis for the horns – don’t nobody want no Nashville horns.”

Other guests include  Jason Isbell  who contributes the Orwellian guitar solo to  “Room 101”  and is part of the “When I Leave” Nazareth-sounding guitar mountain. He also sings on three tracks. “I love Jason’s singing – I’d let him be the voice of my GPS!”  Brian Fallon  (The Gaslight Anthem) sings on two, including in a round with Jason and Cory on “When in Rome.”

Garrison Starr  duets on  “Waterfront.”  “You can’t run into a guitar center and buy Garrison Starr’s voice. You need her. It’s a one of a kind instrument. She said, ‘You want me to sing harmony?’ I said, ‘No we’re swapping lines like Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers in ‘Islands in the Stream.’”  Adam Lazzara  (Taking Back Sunday) sings on  “Honey Come Home.”

The music of Cory Branan is like a magazine anthology that rivets you; you’re always thrilled to get to the next story because it will be different, unexpected, and galvanic. “Why limit myself to a certain genre? My style is limited by liking to tell stories. But whatever the song wants to wear is fine with me. Over the years, if I had done one thing, I’d have more than a modest career now. But if I had to stand there and play acoustic singer songwriter music all the time, I’d be bored out of my mind. I love all these different styles and sounds, I’m restless like that.”

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Young rising sons, saint asonia (rescheduled), electric six + supersuckers, michael marcagi (sold out), the verve pipe, red wanting blue, pedro the lion, about lo-fi lounge | indianapolis, in.

LO-FI Lounge is a unique art space, gallery, and special events venue located on the 2nd Floor of the Murphy Arts Center in historic Fountain Square. Looking for that off-the-beaten-path, hidden gem? With a capacity for up to 100 guests, LO-FI Lounge is the most intimate of our three venues. Shows and events at LO-FI are only open to guests 21 years of age or older. Find the venue for first time guests can be a challenge, but it’s also part of the experience. Guests can access the 2nd floor of the building via the main entrance (glass doors) on the corner of Virginia Ave next to La Margarita’s patio, and off Prospect St. across from the bank parking lot.

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Frequently Asked Questions About LO-FI Lounge | Indianapolis, IN

What are the age restrictions at this venue.

LO-FI Lounge shows are always 21+. We apologize to our underage guests and are working to get this changed.

LO-FI requires a valid ID for admission for all guests. Only valid state or government issues ID’s are permitted. Expired and temporary ID’s are not accepted.

Can I upgrade my to VIP seating?

No. Due to the intimate nature of the venue, LO-FI Lounge does not offer any seating upgrades.

What items are permitted or prohibited at this venue?

At our venues, we strive to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience for all guests. While specific rules may vary slightly depending on the event location, the following list generally applies across all venues.

Any illegal items found will be confiscated immediately. Guests discovered with prohibited items inside the venue may face ejection, and those attempting to enter with such items may be denied entry.

We appreciate your cooperation in adhering to these guidelines to ensure everyone’s safety and enjoyment during our events.

Permitted Items include:

• Small Purse / Fanny Pack – subject to security inspection
• To-go food from local restaurants
• A warm heart & smiles

Non-Permitted Items include:

• No outside beverages
• No weapons of any kind
• No drugs or illegal substances
• No smoking or vaping in venue, designated smoking area outside venue
• No backpacks
• No bad attitudes

The venue reserved the right to deny any item, or guest, should they feel that it poses a security threat to the event.

Can I bring a bag into the show?

Yes! You’re welcome to bring personal purse, fanny pack or handbag so long as it does not exceed 14” x 14” in size. No backpacks are permitted at any time.

What’s the parking situation like?

Parking in Fountain Square can be difficult at times and we highly recommend you carpool, Uber, Lyft, or use public transportation when attending an event. Street and parking is available along Woodlawn Ave, Virginia Ave, and Prospect St. Bicycle parking is available in front of HI-FI on Virginia Ave and neighboring streets. Do not park in the Wine Market parking lot.

What is the camera/photo policy for this venue?

Our photo policy varies for each event and is at the discretion of the artist performing that night. This policy can change from night to night.

As a general guideline, we typically do not permit professional photography unless it has been pre-approved by either HI-FI or the Artist Management.

For approved photographers, you’re welcome to snap photos during the first three songs of the performance. However, please refrain from using flash.

Media personnel and professional photographers interested in covering our events can reach out to us at  to request media credentials.

Is there food and drink at this venue?

Yes, LO-FI Lounge offers a full service bar offering beer, wine and spirits along a small selection of snacks.

View seating maps for this venue

LO-FI is a general admission, standing venue. Guests who arrive early may be lucky enough to grab one of the few cocktail tables.

Can I leave and re-enter the venue?

No. Re-entry is only permitted for use of the restroom facilities.

Do you offer ADA, handicap or special needs options?

The Murphy Arts Center is a handicap accessible building. The elevator is located inside the main entrance near the intersection of Virginia Ave. and Woodlawn Ave. Once you have arrived at the 2nd floor the accessibility continues through the corridor to the LO-FI Lounge. There is no designated ADA seating area at LO-FI. Guests with any special needs or questions should reach out to our box office at [email protected] .

Where is the box office located?

On the night of the show, tickets can be purchased at the door.

Through the week, guest stay purchase tickets at at any of our box office locations which include:

• Virginia Ave Mercantile 1043 Virginia Ave – Suite 2 – Mon. – Fri. 10 a.m – 6 p.m.
• HI-FI Box Office 1043 Virginia Ave. – Suite 4 – Open on all HI-FI show nights – See show listings for times
• HI-FI Annex Box Office (located behind the Murphy Arts Center) – Open on all HI-FI Annex show nights – See show listings for times

I lost something at the show. Who do I contact?

To inquire about lost items including credit cards, clothing, phones, wallets, etc, contact [email protected] . Recovered items are available for pickup in our office (Suite 2) Monday-Friday 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

What is your refund policy?

If a show is postponed, ticket holders will be notified of the change via email, and no other action is needed if you would like to keep your tickets. LO-FI will work to find a new date for the show and provide updates as they become available. If you are unable to attend the rescheduled date, refunds will be offered at point of purchase for 30 days following the rescheduled date. If you paid with cash at the box office for your tickets, you will need to contact [email protected] for further instructions to process your refund.

Tickets purchased online will be automatically refunded in the event of a cancelled show. Please allow 3-5 business days for the refund to post to your bank. No action is required and you should only need to contact the box office if you 1.) paid cash at our box office, 2.) have received a new/different card than the one you originally purchased with, or 3.) if you do not see the refund in your account after 5 business days.

Beware of counterfeit tickets. How do I tell if my ticket is valid?

All buyers should be aware when purchasing tickets through non-authorized sites and ticket resellers. There have been multiple instances of fans being taken advantage of on Facebook, Craig’s List, StubHubk Vivid Seats and other third party broker websites. LO-FI is only required to honor valid tickets issued from our authorized ticket providers with are: Tixr and See Tickets. In the event a show sells out, you can join the waitlist via the official event listing on our website, which will notify you if any tickets become available. When in doubt, you can always reach out to our box office at [email protected] .

Can I purchase tickets in person without fees?

You may purchase tickets at any of our box office locations, during the specified hours, with no services charges.

Do you have free WI-FI?

Yes. LO-FI offers free WI-FI during all shows. Simply select the HI-FI Free WI-FI network and you are all set.

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Cory Branan

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Artist profile | cory branan.

“I pulled these songs from a batch of fifty that mostly predate the pandemic, and all of these felt kin. They’re about doubt, loss, depression, general stir-craziness.

“But I knew I didn’t want to make a record that pondered itself, I wanted it to have motion, so I gave this record an overarching rule: The sadder the song, the more it had to move and groove. That’s how the country weeper  ‘That Look I Lost’  got the Motown treatment. I wanted you to nod along, then after listening ask, Wait, what am I shaking my ass to?”

When I Go I Ghost  is Cory Branan’s sixth full length release. His first was 20 years ago: He ain’t  banging out pulp here.  A writer’s writer, Cory’s lines grip like a page-turner, giddy with interior rhyming and wordplay:

I took a shower but the shower didn’t take – “O’ Charlene”

the kinda wreck I recognize – “C’Mon If You Wanna Come”

You post a picture, notice the mixture The camera captures That ‘before and after’ look in your eye – “C’Mon If You Wanna Come”

When she’s staring down the bad end of the barrel Of yet another long and loaded night – “That Look I Lost”

One propulsive song that jangles with hope is  “Come On If You Wanna Come,”  with lyrics about being too depressed – maybe too hungover – to venture out, accompanied by music that catches the buoyancy one feels after recovering. “’Come On’ is about as optimistic as I can get. We did all the fun Simmons 1980’s drum samples on there, and added concert toms, putting reverse gated reverb on the drums – an old ‘80s Cars-era trick. There’s Rickenbacker and a 12 string guitar. It’s a respite in the record. It evokes the Traveling Wilbury’s, though maybe a meth-y Wilburys.”

Cory’s stories don’t resolve neatly. “I embrace my fluctuating doubt. The way I write, I feel my way through these dark halls and then realize, Oh, this is how the house is shaped.”

Like a novelist, he inhabits the minds and hearts of his creations, much as they inhabit him. “I’m interested in characters at a crossroads, getting in the flux and staying there. In  ‘Of Two Minds,’  I got this feel for the lead character and I asked myself, Who else is in the room with her? Then I realized – she’s the other character too! And by the end, I found myself so wholly identifying that I realized she’s also me.” First she says, “I’m gonna quit while I’m behind,” but in a later verse it’s: “I double down when I’m behind.” Flux indeed, just like real life. That song also features this stinger: “Set the pistol on the dresser and the bed on fire.”

On “Pocket of God,”  he’s created a noir movie. “I tried to get as much of a story as I could in there, with someone in the hot seat. You don’t know who he’s singing to until the end, and it’s a s story of what happened to someone he cared deeply about. That song began as a sweet line about somebody thinking he picked the pocket of God to have met someone, and I thought, That’s too Hallmark, so I tried to balance it with a Raymond Carver sensibility, where definitions aren’t the same for everyone, where the narrator is untrustworthy. I’m a big fan of Randy Newman, the songwriter king of untrustworthy narrators. And this song is an exception on the album in that I didn’t try to counteract the dark lyrics with brighter music. I stayed there, I painted an open void, then kept the music staring right there with me. The string arrangement helps with that – put the headphones on to hear the ear candy in those layered strings from  Matt Combs!  (Combs is the staff fiddler and mandolinist for The Grand Ole Opry.) And that’s  Spencer Cullum  (Steelism) on steel guitar holding drone notes through the whole thing, and he’s also on ‘O Charlene,’ ‘Room 101’, and he plays lap steel on ‘When In Rome.’”Cory approaches songwriting with a combination of self-abnegation and the hyper-critical. “I try to not exist when I’m writing. I write with a magnet, or a divining rod. Then when I’m editing I go in with a scalpel. I try not to look for certainties, I try not to get dogmatic, and all my hope is qualified, highly qualified.”

To parse his emotions, Cory stirs himself with motion. “When I write I usually don’t sit down. Plus I’m on the road a lot, 130, 140 shows a year. But I didn’t write on the road until recently when I learned to get up in the morning and free associate. I look around the motel room, see what it reminds me of, and if I do that before I start driving, then I’ve opened myself up to write in the car. A lot of this record revolves around motion and stasis—should I stay or should I go?”

Though many of the songs are about love predicaments, Cory steers strongly away from the autobiographical – despite a recent divorce. “‘Folks want to treat singer-songwriters as diaries but I’m not really into the self-mythologizing. I don’t write confessional stuff. I don’t find much inspiration in myself. We aren’t the bickering couple on ‘One Happy New Year,’ she isn’t the quasi-alcoholic mess in the venomous ‘When I Leave Here.’ I don’t think there’s any chance of folks mistaking me and her for the murdering drug dealer and thieving prostitute in ‘Pocket of God,’ – but there are plenty other songs they can misread into.”

The autobiographical elements that slip through deal with the mental health of his characters, “Room 101” and “Angels in the Details” in particular. “I’ve been recently diagnosed as manic-depressive, and I had to figure out how to talk about that.  ‘Room 101’  is me trying to get a little more verbal about it. There’s a nosedive, but I pull out of it.” In terms of biography, “’That Look I Lost’ is the only relationship song that’s autobiographical, and  ‘Son of Mine’  has some of me in it.”

“When In Rome” was written far from where Memphis meets Mississippi, where the rural sensibility meets the urban aesthetic, where Cory was raised. But he felt the pull, and also the aura of a great American songwriter. “I wrote  ‘When In Rome’  while driving through Jersey. It came out of one drive. Sometimes the songs are little pieces that linger around and I’ll Frankenstein them together, but a lot of these came out like deer, already standing up.” He laughs. “And I did pick loaded cities to reference. You can’t be more loaded than Memphis and Asbury Park. It reminded me of Guy Clark equating the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s David and Doc Watson.” For the sound, “It was so hard to stay away from Springsteen’s E Street Band sound when we were doing that song. But  Eric Slick , the drummer, made it work. He’s in Dr. Dog. I wanted a drummer who didn’t come from roots music. Eric was versatile and fantastic. He attacked this one like Keith Moon from the Who.”

Cory assembled the band with an ear toward the 1980s radio and MTV he was raised on. “If you look at the pop charts from ‘79 to ‘85, you can’t find two bands that sound the same.” That’s why  When I Go I Ghost  sounds like the spin of an old radio dial in a brand new car. “I find that over-qualified and under-prepared can create lightning in the bottle.” In addition to his expected vocal, guitar and songwriting talents, Cory now adds synth playing, something he learned during the pandemic.

The core band, in addition to drummer Eric Slick, is bassist  Robbie Crowell  (Deer Tick, Midland), who also played on Cory’s previous album  Adios ;  Jarrad K , who produced Ruston Kelly and can play anything, and here is on various keys and synthesizer; and the in-demand  Anthony da Costa  on guitars and vocal harmonies. The album was recorded mostly in Nashville at Battle Tapes with producer and Grammy-winning engineer  Jeremy Ferguson . “We went back to Memphis for the horns – don’t nobody want no Nashville horns.”

Other guests include  Jason Isbell  who contributes the Orwellian guitar solo to  “Room 101”  and is part of the “When I Leave” Nazareth-sounding guitar mountain. He also sings on three tracks. “I love Jason’s singing – I’d let him be the voice of my GPS!”  Brian Fallon  (The Gaslight Anthem) sings on two, including in a round with Jason and Cory on “When in Rome.”

Garrison Starr  duets on  “Waterfront.”  “You can’t run into a guitar center and buy Garrison Starr’s voice. You need her. It’s a one of a kind instrument. She said, ‘You want me to sing harmony?’ I said, ‘No we’re swapping lines like Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers in ‘Islands in the Stream.’”  Adam Lazzara  (Taking Back Sunday) sings on  “Honey Come Home.”

The music of Cory Branan is like a magazine anthology that rivets you; you’re always thrilled to get to the next story because it will be different, unexpected, and galvanic. “Why limit myself to a certain genre? My style is limited by liking to tell stories. But whatever the song wants to wear is fine with me. Over the years, if I had done one thing, I’d have more than a modest career now. But if I had to stand there and play acoustic singer songwriter music all the time, I’d be bored out of my mind. I love all these different styles and sounds, I’m restless like that.”

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About the Venue

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A thousand horses, john r. miller, the hip abduction, the ultimate doors, rod tuffcurls & the bench press, drayton farley.

2018 Primetime Emmy & James Beard Award Winner

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