Cory P. McDaniel

Mettman WZ

cory — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 22:06:42 +0000

Sensationally good

One report in the Mettmann WZ mentions that “The Tremors’ style showed through everywhere in (McDaniel’s) show at the Stadtwaldhaus: rhythms rooted in traditional U.S Blues were mixed with modern arrangements and melodies full of variety. To the joy of the fan community, well-known Tremors’ pieces could be heard as well as his own compositions.”

Said Bluesweek organizer Pieker, McDaniel was “sensationally good,” and added that although not all musical solo tours are successful, “with Cory McDaniel, you can be sure of an aura that was present at the Tremors’ shows of the past.”

McDaniel usually saved the tune “Big White Lies” for the encore.

Two Shows for 3 Twins

cory — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 04:41:25 +0000

The 3 Twins are “Wyoming Bound,” as their song goes, to perform a set of shows catering to all ages with Casper musicians. Once a trio, 3 Twins became 3 Twins Broadband when a horn section and female vocalist were added, doubling the band plus two.

Original members as Subdudes made their name in New Orleans and vocalist/keyboardist John Magnie even appeared in an episode of HBO’s “Treme” last summer. The Colorado-based band’s entrenchment in Casper’s musical legacy dates back to the 1970s when Subdudes guitarist Tommy Malone ended up in Casper, where he found a mentor in Cory McDaniel. The Subdudes in turn influenced several local musicians.

Vocalist and guitarist McDaniel now leads Cory and the Crew, slated to open the concert with special guest John May.

Cory and the Crew have played for a variety of venues, including at a local corrections facility. Residents gave a standing ovation with finger-snapping for applause in accordance with their rules.

Cory and the Crew also perform each Tuesday evening at Art of Coffee owned by Nancy Taylor. They succumbed, after a year, to her requests for “Back Seat of Love,” by local late musician Bill Hayes. Even though it’s a country song, they agreed to play it if Taylor fed them.

High school sophomore May begins a new chapter in local live music, earning his spending money as a one-man vocalist/guitarist act Friday nights at Sanford’s Grub & Pub.

He’s already caught the ears of Casper’s most experienced gigging musicians and lends his talent to Cory and the Crew as he represents the younger generation this concert aims to reach.

“I’ve never really heard John May before but he’s really good,” percussionist Rick Verow said. “He’s got some cool licks.”

Like May, Verow played gigs in Casper as a teen with Flashback, a band that has lasted through the years. As an acoustic percussionist for Cory and the Crew, Verow plays washboard, eggs, djembe and congas among lesser known instruments.

“I’m probably just going to bring a big set-up of percussion toys and see what happens,” Verow said. He’s enjoying playing blues as a main percussionist and learning all kinds of different techniques.

The concert is a great chance for young people to experience good, live music for free, he said. Cory and the Crew learned two songs from May’s repertoire, which he’ll lead on guitars and vocals.

“It’s pretty humbling, actually,” May said about the Crew inviting him to perform with them. He’s just happy to be considered good enough, and learns something new every time they rehearse, including entire new songs.

“I watch pretty much every lick they do on guitars,” May said.

McDaniel said he’d like to see a major under-21 show at least annually. Sponsors have made it possible to organize a free show for under-21s and even feed them some pizza.

“We couldn’t have done it without the community support,” McDaniel said.

Magnie looks forward to mixing 3 Twins Broadband’s danceable music with the energy that young people show. They’ll answer questions and maybe talk a little about how the horn section works with the band.

They’ve been performing as the expanded version for the last year-and-a-half, including last September’s Recovery Rally benefiting the 12-24 Club. They’ve always focused on original songs and “real good grooves, real good rhythms for people to dance to,” Magnie said. “With the horns now and more voices, it’s more colors in the pallet to work with.”

From the Article: Two shows for 3 Twins
Copyright 2010 The Daily Herald

Cory McDaniel performs solo debut in Germany ‘Music is like meditation’

admin — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 08:09:00 +0000

Casper Journal Arts & Community pages
For the week of April 13-19, 2005

By Robin Beaver

The Tremors’ Cory McDaniel rarely performs as a solo act. In fact, he says, he might play as a single for only about an hour or so every other year. You may have seen him at the Beartrap Summer Festival, for example.

So when he was invited to Germany in December to play on his own at the Mettmann Bluesweek festival March 7-12, he was surprised.

McDaniel, Paul Lange and Dale Bohren of The Tremors have been invited regularly to the celebrated Mettmann blues fest since 2001, but this year, promoter Wolfgang Pieker needed to fill a solo slot.

McDaniel agreed, and to his added surprise, he was presented as one of the headliners, along with Stefan George, Eddie Martin, The Charlie Morris Band, Katy Baloun and Nina T. Davis, and Colin Earl and Dave Peabody.

Friends
If he experienced any uneasiness once onstage, it was fleeting.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” he says. “The Tremors are well loved in Germany, but I didn’t know how it would be to perform as a solo.

“The coolest thing was, at the very first gig on Tuesday, I looked out and knew half the people, because we had been there three times before and they became our fans. I feel like they’re my friends. The audience response was wonderful. I felt warm. It was moving.”

Once again, McDaniel came away feeling that “Germans really understand the music.”

In the blues genre, The Tremors play “some pretty obscure stuff,” but in Germany, “they know you’re playing a Tom Waits song or a Leonard Cohen song,” he explains.

On a broader scale, Germans have a deep appreciation for this country’s music, art and movies. It’s so heavily influenced, says McDaniel, that you see American jargon on their posters.

One particularly heartwarming aspect of this festival stands out in his memory, and that is all of the young people in the audience – many more than usual.

“Keep playing this music, or it’ll be lost,” was his advice to the youth of Germany.

Lost in music
The fans loved McDaniel’s clever way of including the other Tremors’ musicians when he was onstage, he says. Propped up near him were enormous photos of Bohren and Lange.

When performing with The Tremors, McDaniel cues off of Lange’s harmonica and Bohren’s bass.

“If those parts aren’t there, I think, ‘What’s the next verse?’ When Dale’s harmonies are not there, I can get off course. We’ve played so long together that I get lost without them,” McDaniel says.

His biggest challenge, then, was rearranging the music. He wondered, “How do I arrange this so there aren’t empty spaces?”

But McDaniel loves arranging more than anything, and it came easily.

To him, music is all encompassing and is like meditation – a place in which he can get “completely lost.”

As a solo act, he stuck with almost all of The Tremors’ originals – music that McDaniel wrote. But he included pieces that they don’t get to play a lot, he says, such as Cohen’s “I’m Your Man” and “There is a War.”

‘Sensationally good’
One report in the Mettmann WZ mentions that “The Tremors’ style showed through everywhere in (McDaniel’s) show at the Stadtwaldhaus: rhythms rooted in traditional U.S. blues were mixed with modern arrangements and melodies full of variety. To the joy of the fan community, well-known Tremors’ pieces could be heard as well as his own compositions.”

McDaniel usually saved the tune “Big White Lies” for the encore.

The trio’s new album of the same name is due to hit music stores this spring.For more information about The Tremors, visit www.thetremors.com/index.php.

Wuppertal article 2009 (German)

admin — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:02:58 +0000

Uraufführung: Ein „Tuffi“-Song aus Wyoming

Der US-Musiker Cory McDaniel hat ein Lied über Wuppertals berühmte Elefantendame geschrieben.

von Valeska von Dolega

Cory McDaniel erntete Applaus für seinen Song. (Foto: Simone Bahrmann)
Wuppertal. Eine der berühmtesten Repräsentantinnen Wuppertals ist zweifelsohne Pina Bausch. Aber nicht sie, sondern eine weitere Grande Dame der Stadt ist jüngst auf der Mettmanner Blueswoche besungen und gefeiert worden: Tuffi.

„Ich fand ihre Geschichte faszinierend“, erklärt Cory McDaniel, der musikalischen Welt als die eine Hälfte des Blues-Duos The Tremors bekannt. Dass ein Elefantenmädchen zu Reklamezwecken in die Schwebebahn verfrachtet wurde und „einen spektakulären Sturz überlebte“, wurde dem Amerikaner bei einem Gastspiel im Tal vor ein paar Jahren erzählt. Und ließ den Gitarristen auch zu Hause, das ist in Wyoming, USA, nicht mehr los. Also tat der Gitarrist das, was ein Musiker in solchen Fällen tut: er komponierte ein Stück über sie. „Das Lied ist grade zweieinhalb Wochen alt.“

Sind die Songs Cory McDaniels sonst eindeutig in der Tradition von Muddy Waters oder Paul Butterfields zu sehen und knüpfen an Leonard Cohen oder Tom Waits an, so ist „Tuffi“ eine „echte Zirkusnummer mit Happy End geworden“, wie der Komponist lachend bekennt. „Die Melodie hat einen Dreivierteltakt, ist ein bisschen wie ein Walzer – und höchst unterhaltsam“. Schon die ersten Takte des Liedes erinnern nicht an hitzeflirrende Südstaaten-Baumwollfelder, sondern an eine Zirkuskuppel.

Entsprechend amüsiert haben sich auch die Zuhörer im Mettmanner Stadtwaldhaus, wo Cory McDaniels und Bassist Dale Bohren zusammen mit Kent DuChaine auftraten. Die „Tuffi“-Premiere war eine Welturaufführung, die ausgiebig beklatscht wurde. „Das Lied kommt auf jeden Fall auf unsere neue CD“, verspricht Cory McDaniel, dessen Lieblingstier trotz aller Sympathie für Tuffi sein „kleiner, süßer Hund“ bleibt. Seinen Deutschland-Aufenthalt nutzte er übrigens auch dazu, auf Tuffis Spuren zu wandeln – also ausgiebig mit der Schwebebahn über das Wuppertal zu schweben.

Wuppertal article 2009 (English)

admin — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 07:45:46 +0000

WZ Newsline, West Germany Newspaper

March 30, 2009

Cory McDaniel wrote a song about Wuppertal’s famous elephant lady.

By Valeska Von Dolega

One of the most famous representatives of Wuppertal is without a doubt Pina Bausch. Alas, not her, but another Grand Dame of the city has just been celebrated in song during the Mettmann Bluesweek: Tuffi.
“I found her story/history fascinating,” explained Cory McDaniel, who is known in the music world as one half of the blues duo The Tremors. During a performance in the valley a few years ago, the American was told that a girl elephant had been put in the Schwebebahn for advertising purposes and had “survived a spectacular fall.” And that stuck with the guitarist at home, which is in Wyoming, USA. So the guitarist did what musicians do in such a case: he composed a piece about her. “The song is only 2-1/2 weeks old.”

If his songs are usually in the tradition of Muddy Waters or Paul Butterfields and or remind of Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits, then “Tuffi” turned into a “real circus act with a happy ending,” as the composer admits smiling. “The melody is a 3/4 rhythm, a little like a waltz – and highly entertaining.” Even the first few notes remind not of heat-flickering Southern cotton fields, but of a circus tent.

Consequently amused was the audience in the Mettmann Stadtwaldhaus, where Cory McDaniel and bass player Dale Bohren performed together with Kent DuChaine. The performance of “Tuffi” was a world premiere, which earned a lot of applause. “The song will definitely make our new CD,” promises Cory McDaniel, whose favorite animal continues to be his “cute, little dog” despite all sympathy for Tuffi. He also used his stay in Germany to follow Tuffi’s path — to float in the Schwebebahn above the Wupper valley.

Cory P. McDaniel

Mettman WZ

Related show

Two Shows for 3 Twins

Cory McDaniel performs solo debut in Germany ‘Music is like meditation’

Wuppertal article 2009 (German)

Uraufführung: Ein „Tuffi“-Song aus Wyoming

Der US-Musiker Cory McDaniel hat ein Lied über Wuppertals berühmte Elefantendame geschrieben.

Related show

Wuppertal article 2009 (English)

WZ Newsline, West Germany Newspaper

Cory McDaniel wrote a song about Wuppertal’s famous elephant lady.

Related show