There’s something perversely beautiful about a guy who’s been around the block long enough to know the game, yet still walks straight into Sun Studio with a guitar and a grin, daring to summon ghosts. That’s what Cory M. Coons does on The Sun Sessions, his new EP that sounds like it crawled out from under the floorboards where rock ’n’ roll itself was sweating in the dark. It’s not nostalgia; it’s resurrection. And not the pretty kind, either — this is dirt-under-the-nails, cigarette-in-the-ashtray, “let’s roll tape and see if the muse is drunk enough to dance” resurrection.
Coons, the Canadian troubadour with a knack for sincerity that should’ve gone extinct after 1974, strips everything back to the bone. No gloss, no digital Botox, no fancy studio trickery — just a man, a mic, and a reel-to-reel spinning like it’s 1956 and Elvis just left the building. The centerpiece here is “Crumbs ’24,” the 20th-anniversary remake of his 2004 song. Recorded live off the floor, it’s bare and beautiful — a tumbleweed hymn to time and persistence. You can hear the room breathing, the guitar wood groaning, the man himself teetering between reflection and rebirth. In a world addicted to quantized perfection, this kind of imperfection feels like oxygen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oya1wtRw4E4&pp=ygUcY29yeSBtIGNvb25zIG1lbXBoaXMgd2hpc2tleQ%3D%3D
Then there’s “Memphis Whiskey Blues,” which might as well be the sound of Coons pouring his heart into a mason jar and sliding it down the bar to Muddy Waters’ ghost. It’s lazy in the best way — slouched, smoldering, sipping its own sadness. The lyrics aren’t reinventing the wheel (“I got them Memphis whiskey blues / I don’t know what to do”), but that’s the point. The blues were never about cleverness; they were about communion — that communion between a busted soul and a six-string that’s seen too much. Coons understands this in his bones, and he makes you feel it, too.
“Faded Glory (Land of the Free)” sharpens the political edge — the song aches for an America that might’ve existed only in myth but still stirs the blood when sung from a Memphis pulpit. And then there’s the audacity — or maybe the humility — to close with a Sun-soaked medley of “Hound Dog/Don’t Be Cruel.” Coons doesn’t try to out-Elvis Elvis; instead, he walks the same cracked tile floors and tips his hat to the King with a kind of reverent mischief. It’s not mimicry — it’s memory, played through calloused fingers and a voice that carries the weight of time.
The Sun Sessions isn’t perfect, thank God. It hums, it hisses, it wobbles — and that’s its glory. In an era where music sounds like it was printed by machine, Cory M. Coons reminds us that rock ’n’ roll was born out of sweat, tape, and grace. It was meant to be flawed. It was meant to be human. And somewhere in that famous little Memphis room, between the ghosts of Elvis, Cash, and Perkins, another songwriter just bled a little truth onto magnetic tape — and somehow, that’s still enough to feel alive.
– Leslie Banks