Switched on Pop - Cory Henry has Something to Say

Episode Date: October 20, 2020

Cory Henry is a remarkably gifted multi-instrumentalist. Growing up in the church, he started playing the Hammond B3 organ at age 2 and played his first gig at Apollo theater in NYC at age 6. As a professional musician he’s played along side Bruce Springsteen, Boyz II Men, The Roots, Kirk Franklin and many others including the acclaimed group Snarky Puppy which earned 3 Grammys during his tenure playing keys. Now he leads his band Cory Henry & The Funk Apostles who are releasing an album on Oct 30th called Something To Say, which features all of Henry’s gifts, but especially his voice in an album that makes you want to get up and dance as much as it makes you want to take action.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to Switchedon Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Today I'm featuring a conversation with a musician, I think we'll wow you. Corey Henry is a remarked. remarkably gifted multi-instrumentalists. Growing up in the church, he started playing the Hammond B-3 organ at age two and played his

first gig at the Apollo Theater in New York City at age six. And as a professional musician, he's played alongside Bruce Springsteam, Boys to Mem, The Roots, Kirk Franklin, and many others, as well as he's played keys with the acclaimed group Snarky Puppy, which earned three Grammys during his tenure. Now he leads his band Corey Henry and the Funk Apostles, who are releasing an album on October 30th called Something to Say, which features all of Henry's gifts, but especially his voice on an album that makes you want to get up and dance as much as it makes you want to take action. Here's my conversation with Corey Henry.

Also, just before we get started, a funny aside, Corey's little new pipple puppy gets on the microphone a few times, so you might hear her snorting. It's adorable. I feel like a major theme that I've been seeing in music today is this contrast of upbeat music. with more introspective lyrics. And I feel like your opening song, Don't Forget, does just this. Yeah, man, I'm glad I wrote the music first on this one.

This is one song that I was sitting in the studio and I played all the instruments on this track. After I got the track to a place that I liked sonically, it took me a while to find a chorus that I liked. And then I found this melody. I found the melody chorus after about like, it took me about a month or something. It was like a while.

After I laid down the track this one night, And I was inspired by like so many life events that's been happening. It's been like crazy. I remember saying to a friend of mine, it's like, it's crazy. We'd be up in arms for a week and a half. You know, like socially. We'll all be on one accord about one thing. And it would last about a week or so before, if not two days sometimes.

The new cycle is mad. Yeah. The main thing was about that. Like don't forget what you're fighting for. Don't forget what you're living for. And I was like, oh, that's it. How does don't forget set the scene for what you're wanting to say on this record? For me, it's about taking a step into being a lyricist, be a vocalist.

I do have something to say, you know, and I feel like my music is my safe space to say it. Don't forget sets it up because it's a thing, a concept that comes from my heart. Unlike any other record on this album, this one is one of the first ones. that I played every instrument and I did all the vocals and I did everything. And I'm like, this is my sound. This is, you know, how I feel about everything. I'm really proud of that. I've been listening a lot recently to Stevie Wonder's Inervisions,

played, perform, recorded, pretty much the entire thing by himself. Yet it has the spirit of a live band. And I think more importantly in how it connects to our conversation, I feel like he has this remarkable capacity to incorporate all that's going on in any given moment, whether it's romance on the one hand or the fight for equality on the other. It's all in his music.

And I feel like we get a taste of that. Right when we get into your record, don't forget. Not only are we getting all Corey Henry, playing the whole thing. But we're getting a really potent message. You implore listeners, don't forget what you're living for, what you're fighting for. What do you feel like you're living for and fighting for these days?

I want my music to fight for the change I want to see in this world, you know, I think that we want to see in this world in terms of peace and equality, especially in this nation. Racism is rampant in all these things. I want, you know, my music to at least serve, you know, a purpose just like some of my heroes serve their purpose musically, you know, in the fight that they was living through during those times and errors that they lived through. And I think that is like really paramount for me to be able to serve the purpose, you know, to help people to keep fighting. Everybody fights differently, you know what I'm saying? And this is my first time actually really honing in my music voice, my musical voice, my talents and all of my energy to say something on record. I do believe that in these times that we're living in, we will forget major events, you know, for other major events. And then it's like at the end of the day, we still haven't beat racism.

And it's like as much as I, you know, before all of this crazy stuff that I thought was crazy in terms of today's living standards, you know. I watched videos from the 60s and I always like, oh man, I used to say I wanted to be born in that time just because, you know, sly. I'm looking at these guys. But then it's like, wait a minute, it's 2000. We are here. You know what I'm saying? So all of my favorite songs, they're talking about the things I'm living through. And I feel more inspired to talk about those things because I'm living through them things.

Speaking for myself, and I think it might resonate for many of us, it's a time of being relatively removed while also engaged often at a distance. And that's often happening through being a news junkie, reading too much media. And it's really easy to jump on to the next thing. We can just consume and consume and consume all the news. But here, you're encouraging people to go out and fight for something. And we're going to hear about that throughout the rest of the record. but I think you make an interesting turn in your second song. Following, don't forget, we get a track called Happy Days.

Happy Days for me feels like the want song of this record. You tackle issues of gun rights, what it is to be black in America, speaking directly to saying the names of those who have been killed by police violence. And yet, we have a song called Happy Days, because it seems like despite these overtly political songs, The core desire is that we can all be happy. We can experience love. We can have joy.

Absolutely. Happy days came at a moment when I first moved. I was walking down the block and I was looking at the trees and something about the atmosphere of where I was staying at. And I was like, man, this thing had me in a different place. I went to the studio and I have this rule about not leaving the studio with ideas. You know, if I still have ideas, I need to record them. I started playing these chords and, like, out of nowhere, I had the melody and the

chords, it just came together. And it was like, whoa. And then when I thought about what I wanted to talk about in this record, you know, I was really just like, I want happy days. I want literally, and I thought it was corny at first, but when I was like, you know, because I was thinking about, like, love in a certain sense, but then it was like more broad, you know, just like, like we all can create happy days, like friendships or loved ones, you know, or whatever family is like, it can actually be more broad than it comes off because, like, this record was about straight up summertime, joy,

fun, happiness. I was like, this is vibes to me all day long. To get through this hard stuff, sometimes we got to have those happy days. We got to know what we're fighting for. And, you know, musically, I feel this also feels

quite connected to a lot of other happy songs. I hear tastes of daft punk something about us. Beyonce's love on top. Oh yeah. Bring the beat in.

And for me, I get a lot of Stevie Wonders. Isn't she lovely in here as well? I want to talk about that. The album is really clearly making a statement about having something to say. And one of the things that you're quite known for beyond your voice, which you're really highlighting here, is your instrumental voice. You play a lot of different instruments. And I wanted to just sort of hone in on them because I think they really show off your multiple talents. What is the instrument that's going on when you're soloing?

It's a melodica. It's a keyboard that you blow into. You have to blow into it to get the sound to come in while you play the keyboards. It's unlike all the other keyboards. It's a wind instrument keyboard. It's a wind instrument keyboard, basically. When I first wrote the song, my vision was for Stevie Wonder to play the solo. It sounds like harmonica-ish.

I said, if I couldn't get him to sing or do something, whatever, because that might have been too big of a stretch. My idea, I'm telling you when I first wrote the song, I said, there's only about what, few bars or something. like that, it's a short solo. Yeah. He can play harmonica. He will blaze this thing. You know, it hasn't happened yet, but I was trying to get the closest thing to that kind of thing. Stevie Wonder is definitely probably the biggest inspiration for that particular one, for me.

One of the things I hear on this track is a pretty simple organ vamp, mostly going back and forth through a couple chords. But at every moment, there's all this movement and change and chorusing that's going on. when I've watched videos of you play, it's equally you playing your instrument, but also it feels like you're a mechanic, and you're just like constantly moving and turning things to make the instrument breathe and do things that I completely don't understand. I was wondering if you'd give us a quick little lesson on how you bring life to that instrument. And maybe we could use the chords of happy days as an example. Oh, man, wow. The organ is fun, I guess, because it's so

many different things you can do at one time, right? So like, there's two manuals, meaning there's two keyboards in which you can play simultaneously. So, like, you can take a bright sound and then like a paddy sound, right? Right. And just with your hands, create a motion like two, three, um. So my right hand is playing a quarter note. And my left hand is just padding it. You know, a lot of keyboards, you can't get two different sounds.

And then I can play bass at the same time with my feet, right? I can be like the whole rhythm section. You know what I'm saying, that kind of thing. I'm playing a really with my feet, I'm patterning my hands, and then on my right foot, you know, you can make it really interesting by like using the volume pedal. So there's a volume pedal, right? You know, so you can do a whole bunch of different things to just a number of chords to make it, you know, feel like it's not the same two chords you heard.

You know, like, it always feels new to, new to play these chords. Sometimes I want to solo over it. You know, like it's just so much, I feel like I can play over those two chords. It always feels like life to be, you know. And I love turnaround types of things. I think it comes from, like, playing in church a lot. One of the sounds that totally wowes me is I feel like at times you just make the entire thing scream like a human voice.

How in the world do you do that? Turn it up real loud. Pull the things out, turn it up loud, and just lay that thing. I love the B3. You know that thing. Dang, that's what I'm talking about. Welcome to church. That is church.

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America Actually, every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. You say that the B3 has soul to it, and I feel like the life of this record comes across in your song, Rise. I have said that you play music that is informed by spiritual principles, where music connects to the soul, connects with a deeper part of us, and inspires people to change and do good things. how is that happening for you on the song Rise? When I wrote the song, I wasn't thinking about some of the issues that we were going through today or having gone through this pandemic. You recorded the song a little while back. I wrote it right before I went on tour in October, so some time around June and July last year.

2019, yeah. But, you know, as I said before, it's not like it's a new thing or a new concept in terms of what I'm talking about. But it was one of my first times actually doing it with my voice from my perspective, you know, in a way that I like to do it. You know, I listen to Sly and Family Stone, and Larry Graham and Curtis Mayfield and Danny Had the way. And there's just so many people that like spoke about change and they were, they weigh Marvin Gayne.

Without trying, the words just flowed out. The second verse came first. I said, it feels like somehow. That last line is when I knew I had like a thing because I was like, wait a minute. I saw a video on Twitter, which I often look at. of these robots delivering packages. And I was just like, wow, you know.

That I saw another video of a robot shooting basketball or throwing a football. One of the, like, doing a sports activity. Right. They got these robots doing everything. What happened if, like, the human race are slaves to robots? What happened if they just, like, go haywire? Like, we're not going to be able to beat no robots. Like, I don't care.

Seem Terminator. It might go downhill. It's just like, you know, this is a pretty, you know, this is probably in some movie somewhere, but I'm just, that's what I was thinking about. And then it just kind of hit. And I was like, you know, we got to rise. We got to come together. We got to whatever that means in terms of like the realness.

I wanted that to fill through song, like all of those things. It's like it was evident. It was like right at the front of my mind once like those things came out, you know, what the next thing was. And I was just like, we're going to rise. And I was like, man, this feels down home. I feel like I wrote this 20 years ago when I was playing in church every Sunday. You know, it feels like, you know,

something that they would be singing in 1964. You know, it feels like something that we could be singing in 2030. It's a thing that I feel like I'm happy about because the song is simple, you know, like I wasn't going for accord changes and jazzy things and whatever. I was just like, musically, I wanted to be powerful and lyrically I wanted to be powerful.

And, man, we play that song anytime, we play that song, I'll just be like, ooh, pumping my chest up because the feeling that the song gives me is unspeakable. It's, oh, man, it feels so, it just feels amazing. And it's one of my favorite songs on the record. When everyone's singing, we're going to rise. It feels connected to the church and that the chorus is just so angelic. It's enormous. You feel surrounded by it and surrounded by it in the best way. You're part of it. It's warm. It's beautiful. It's Thank you. It's a call to action.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The song, when it came to you, I love the story, is sort of, you know, you going down into a Twitter wormhole and having a sci-fi dystopian nightmare. And yet, to a certain degree, that nightmare has arrived in a form you maybe hadn't totally anticipated. And we are needing to fight technology, which is a real threat to democracy as we're experiencing in, uh, it's a gift of course, amongst all the social media platforms. and they're twisting of algorithms that are actually hurting our democracy. So that's happening.

That's happening. Global protests for equality, social justice. I mean, they were happening, but not on the level of noise that they're happening now. So a lot has changed since you wrote this song, and I'm curious about how has the meaning of rise changed for you since you penned it?

I don't know if it changed since I penned it. I think that I've become more confident in it, since I penned it. I don't try to write political songs. I'm not calling this a political song, but I don't try to do that thing. But even before I called this record, something to say I didn't really have a name of the record.

That just happened at the end because I was like, oh, I feel like I'm saying something important. You know, but RISE, I wasn't like, you know, I wasn't like trying until those lines happened. And when I put it out, I didn't know I want to be judged or I don't know what it was, but there was a certain kind of like, let me chill factor on this song because they can wait or something like that.

But when it came out, it came out in the midst of so much chaos. I was like, man, the timing of the song has given me confidence because it's like I wrote it at a time where I wasn't trying to do that and it fits a time where it needs to be in. Sometimes as a writer, I'm not as confident in all the songs I'm writing. You know, like I'm writing them for, a certain scenario or I just like talking about another thing. You know, there's all these other things.

When I push it out rather and it becomes a thing that I can be confident in, it's like it's different. That part is different. But I feel the same way as I felt when I wrote it, you know, because like I said earlier, it's like, you know, the things happened in the 60s and all those things and the 50s or the 40s, whatever. So, you know, I had a good place of where I'm writing from, but I wasn't as confident. and as I am now,

I'm much more confident about the message of that song now. It makes sense to be fearful of putting yourselves out there, being vulnerable in this way, and yet it connects for exactly that reason. And I feel this song is not about centering you and your experience, because when we hear Rise, it's everybody's voice. It's about everybody. It is about everybody.

How many bodies is everybody? It's inviting, you know? Yeah. It doesn't feel exclusive. Yeah. Feels like you're inviting everybody else to have something to say. I am. Kind of coming back full circle.

In your song, don't forget, you have this lyric. Time means nothing without change. Time means nothing without change. So don't waste it. Don't waste it. I'm someone who really dives deep into sort of musical components I like getting in the weeds. But recently, lyric has been very important to me. And this line really stood out.

I think because of this difficult contrast that we live in right now, where there is both so much change happening at once, back to the message of your song, Don't Forget. And at the same time, there is no change, right? We have to be, if we're being responsible for our health and others, relatively secluded. Days just seem to flow on by in an infinite amount of, time that is both forever long and extremely fast.

How do you feel like you're using this time so that it's not wasted? Oh, man, that's, yeah. I'm trying to, I'm trying to use the time much better these days now that we all have the same time per day in terms of, you know, most of us, at least I'm sure. It's just all of us, I want to say, 24 hours, you know. This pandemic, when everything was shut down, we all, like, at the house, you know, all like and not doing nothing. They're like, try to figure it out.

I've been creating focuses, certain focuses. Musically, in the studio, my focus has been like the completion of a record. It can sound easy, but it's like a task because there's so many things that go within it, you know, from the mixing and the mastering or just, you know, trying to get the sonic scape of recording it, right. Everyone's song is 10,000 small decisions. It's really, really is, really is. And outside of that, creating other focuses, you know, trying to work out more, you know, not develop this pandemic gut, you know, that I've been getting, you know, during a quarantine time.

Just like getting out, you know, seeing at least a city, seeing a world as it is, and not taking in too much of the politics and not doing too much of the social media binging that I used to, you know, just trying to keep a clear head. Just trying to just change it up, you know, because I think before these moments. you know, things are going on so fast that, like, you just got to just go with the, and I'm from New York, so, like, being from New York, I just want to go as fast as I can go. But during this time, it's like, oh, no, you get to slow down and really be introspective and figure things out and make the right decisions as you go forward because it's really going to be monumental what we all do as a people, you know, just like, how do we come together actually as people, like, what is that step?

What do we have to do? and so on and so forth. And, you know, a lot of talk about it and there's time to be about it. I know there are some of us and some of, you know, there's so many people out here that are about it and fighting for change on the streets and then sand and then out there, warriors, you know what I'm saying? It's like, it means he more of that, you know? There's so much division that's happening in this country right now.

And it's like, that's crazy. In 2020, we talk about wearing masks. You got a ways to go, but I want the music to serve purpose as that, you know, I want to be a part of the change that I want to see if that makes sense. Well, thank you for putting the message out there. Time means nothing without change, so don't waste it. What's the next line on that one? So we keep trying, we keep trying. Hate is fear that is not tamed.

Woo! That's woo! So we keep trying. We keep trying every day. Please don't. Hate is fear that's not tame. I thought that was a nice line too. You know, because we just let the hate just control us.

I'm saying to us, but people. You know what I mean? Like, racism is hate. It is controlled and formed and fear. It's like in hate. And when you don't tame it, it's just some, it's a beast. So let's not forget. That's good.

Come on, Corey Henry. I mean, hey, I feel like, given your experience, growing up learning to play the organ in the church, I feel like that lyric is a sermon well-earned to preach. Oh, man, we can stay on that. We can stay on that, you know. And even in that with this song, it's like, there's not a lot of lyrics, it's all important. You know what I'm saying? Like, the second verse is like, it's not a lot.

But I feel like it's important. First verse is the same way. It's like, it's not a lot, but it's important. And you can stay on one of those things and talk about that for however many minutes you want to. It's just real. It's like, you know, I'm like, I say a lot. For this record or something to say, I said a lot of stuff. Like, I think I really pushed the envelope.

And there might be some moments where I think people might want to debate me. And I'm kind of ready for that, you know, because I'm putting this music out and I'm saying what I want to say. And I feel confident about what I'm putting out there, you know. But there's certain no debatables, you know, like what we're. we're talking about right now, that's like we all live by kind of the standard. Like if we can live by that standard, you can understand what I'm saying. Like, we all can't waste time. Time is the most valuable thing we have.

Like, it's more valuable to money. There's no way you can convince me otherwise. I hope people feel that, you know, I hope people feel that when they hear some of these records is like, I get with that. I get what he's saying. He's saying something. Gratz, I'm putting this record out. It's been a real joy getting to share it with.

do you feel like there's anything else that you would like to leave us with is there anything you didn't feel like you got to touch on these songs or on the rest of the record no man i just want people to enjoy the journey you know on this record i want people to just be receptive and you know and open and and enjoy it you know and then dance and have fun and play it to their friends and hopefully their friends like it and their friends play to their friends and rise up i'm not uh I'm not pressed beyond anything beyond that I just want people to like it

because I like it It's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you All right, cool man I appreciate you for having me on man Can't wait to see what you do with it man All right man live in love man Yeah right on Thanks Corey

So next week we're going to be kicking off A four part series called anthems It's going to examine how a song Can Rile Up a whole crowd Get them out of their seat All stomping their feet together and we're leading off with one of the most rousing anthems of all, Queens, we are the champions.

I've probably heard this song close to a thousand times. And yet, Nate had me hearing this operatic track in an entirely new way. Come back next week to check it out. Until then, you can find us on social media at Switchdown Pop on the web at Switchdown Pop.com. This episode was produced by Bridget Armstrong, guest engineered by Bill Lance, illustrations by Aaron Scott Lee, Social Media by Abby Barr. The Shot Kerwaw and Liz Kelly Nelson are our executive producers. I'm Charlie Harding

and we're a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network. We'll see you next Tuesday with a little Freddie Mercury and until then, thanks for listening.