Corey Woodcock – Waitin’ On A Train
Waitin’ On A Train
Written by Gina Tutko-Usalis
At the age of seven, Corey Woodcock started playing fast punk songs, learning the “power chord” and writing songs. Having grown up with parentswho played in a bluegrass band, he has tons of memories of his parents having friends over for basement parties and pickin’ bluegrass songs for hours. “Without a doubt, my parents have been my biggest inspiration musically,” says Corey. He adds, “I owe a hell of a lot to a guy named Matt, who was a son of a family friend. Matt was 5-6 years older than me and I thought he was the coolest dude in the world. He played guitar, listened to punk music and was a skater; so I was too, of course. I begged my parents for a guitar when I was 7 years old… I got one!” Now Corey Woodcock is an up and coming Central PA musician who is getting ready to launch his first debut album in mid-2010.
Corey is inspired by the world around him and the world within him. He writes about what he sees and what he feels. Couple of good ole tunes about women and drinkin’, couple more serious songs and perhaps some instrumentals.
“For the most part, my songs write themselves; I can’t truly take the credit. If a line, or melody or something comes to me, I immediately write it down or record it, and usually once I get started, I don’t stop until it’s finished! I just can’t sit down at any given moment and write a song,” he said.
When you see Corey – you see a young, slender, long-haired individual who is soft spoken. Behind that is an ambitious, intelligent musician with remarkable talent. Music is the ultimate from of expression for him. His first instrument was piano, which he played for a few years before giving up to focus more on guitar. Unlimited in music and lyrical content, Corey plays an array of instruments: guitar, pedal steel and the square-neck dobro / resophonic guitar. In addition, he likes to play the mandolin, sitar and a little banjo when no one is around. The cello was his instrument all through school. Truly, this musician loves playing all of them all but the guitar is what feels most comfortable to him. Corey tells me, “there’s nothing quite like playing pedal steel; I mean, it’s such an emotional and beautiful instrument, you can bring yourself to tears, man!”
This Americana Rocker has an endless list of musical influences- Gram Parsons, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Warren Zevon, Hank Williams, Sr., Little Feat and Waylon Jennings just to rattle off a few. Corey, who listened to punk and metal in his teenage years also listens to some of the newer Alt-Country. So call him a “music mutt” – you’re bound to hear a little bit of everything in his musical creations.
Some of that can be experienced when you hear him play with HotWingJones (HWJ) – 
a band who has been a staple in the Central PA Scene for about 9 years. HWJ plays a stylistically varied fusion of original compositions and cover songs. “Playing with HotWingJones has been and continues to be a BLAST! There are some really talented guys in the band and they’ve all been great to me. I certainly owe them for giving me lots of exposure and for incorporating two of my songs, “Rheannin” and “25 to Life” into the HWJ repertoire. HWJ also does a reggae-fied version of “Rock ‘n Roll“ which is a favorite of mine and our version of Folsom Prison Blues is always fun. Rocco Beckenhelm actually was nice enough to come up to my recording sessions to play drums on my new upcoming solo album,” he says with a smile on his face. 
“I also play with A.D. Chandler who is one of the most talented songwriters I have ever heard.”
Having played in punk bands and metal bands, the biggest being Perfect Enemy, Corey got use to playing in the underground hardcore scene. Going on to say, “I remember we played a gig in Philadelphia when I was 16 – unreal! We all thought that we were gonna be huge. Something changed though when I was about seventeen and I started listening to more jam-band and roots music. I started writing different kinds of music. I attribute that to a very long and powerful mind-bending experience I had. Eventually, I decided that even though the instrument scared the hell out of me, I wanted to learn the pedal steel. There’s no instrument like it, but I got a looong way to go.” Without a doubt, Corey has immense talent and when you hear him play the pedal steel, he is right… it is beautiful. It surely doesn’t sound like he has a lot to learn because he captivates you with every sound he produces!
The upcoming new album has a working title of Sundog and will be a 12 track debut. He has been working on it for some time now and is really happy with the way is has come along. The most difficult thing for Corey was choosing his songs and getting them to where he wanted them to be musically. Wanting to tweak them and fix parts as any creative musician does – going over things again and again wanting perfection. “It was really amazing to be left to my own devices and just go wild. Of course, that was with the help of the great producer Bret Alexander. Honestly, I wouldn’t have wanted to make the album with anyone else. Bret’s got unbelievable talent for all things music! 
Playing, engineering, producing… making this record has been both fun and enlightening. I would recommend any musician looking for a studio to check out Saturation Acres Recording Studio in Dupont outside of Wilkes-Barre, PA. It was also a joy to work with the extremely talented and good-looking Cold Jordan Singers as well.”
So what can we anticipate on the Woodcock debut album? “One of my favorite tracks is called “Survivor” with Bret playing a little guitar on it and my Dad who played some banjo on it. I just love the song! I have been told it sounds like Warren Zevon and Son Volt… a pretty straightforward Americana type Rock‘n Roll song,” says Corey.
There is also a song titled “Ghost” which was originally played with Perfect Enemy. The music was written by Corey and the lyrics were a 50/50 mix of Corey and Jarod Shannon who was the band’s bass player. The lyrical changes Jarod made about war, death and such were all to the original version. It’s a song that Corey has been wanting to re-do for some time now but with more of a country-folk flavor. The new version has the same lyrics just with a country-ish twist. “I originally wrote the song for a guy I went to high school with who died; got hit by a car on his bike. His nickname was “Gost.” We kept the original chorus, the name, and I added some strings; of course, the ever present Cold Jordan Singers brought it all together. This is one of, if not my favorite, song on the album.”
A standard country-rock song called “That Old Lonesome Blues” can be found on the album. Brian, a friend of Corey’s, wrote a verse with some really great lines. Who doesn’t like a song about drinkin’, a bad woman and runnin’ from the law? And trains, can’t forget that.
That said, I asked Corey where he thinks he is in his quest for greatness? He commented, “I’m waitin’ on a train…”
Links of interest:
www.myspace.com/coreywoodcock123
www.myspace.com/saturationacresrecordingstudio
(A.D. Chandler Photo by Megan Orsinger)
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