Available Light

Description

"David Corley has a rough baritone voice, one that makes you think of heartbreak, cigarettes and the low purr of a mountain lion." Wei Huan-Chen, Journal Courier

"If there's an album that's a bigger surprise this year than David Corley's "Available Light," I haven't heard it. At the ripe old age of 53, Corley has released a debut disc of ragged, atmospheric blues-rock that he most likely didn't have in him when he was a younger man. We reap the benefits of Corley's experience, and of the desperation apparent in his worn-through vocals….But there's an underlying sense of hopeful resignation that comes through his weary croak and easygoing Americana piano and guitar, not to mention lyrics that have at times an almost Leonard Cohen-esque zen to them." Pete Chianca, Wicked Local

"Produced by Hugh Christopher Brown Corley sings about rural Indiana, staring at the night sky and making ends meet. His hoarse baritone voice fits the rootsy blues music like a glove." Hans Werksman, Here Comes the Flood

Lafayette, Indiana - David Corley has been scribbling down notes, ideas, and tunes by hand for as long as he can remember, secretly creating an expansive body of work that has consumed and kept him out of the public eye for a span of decades until this very moment in time.

At the age of 53, Corley is ready to release his debut album, Available Light, produced by the acclaimed Canadian multi-instrumentalist Hugh Christopher Brown. Available Light, a collection of original indie rootsy-rock songs, encompasses the poetic landscapes of Corley's heart, as well as his life in rural Indiana and travels across the United States. From the opening notes and first words ("pink clouds") of "Available Light," Corley's rich raw baritone and imaginative lyrics ponder the immediacy of the passing of time as if he were on deadline to write:

"the book
well it's a movie now
'bout how i was busted up and laid-out
tried to grab this girl,
she was goin' way too fast around
didn't understand quite how she was wound
but you know we wound up tight
and i shot it all
with the available light
the available light"

A voracious reader, David's songs were also inspired by his vivid dreams and classic literature he's been entranced with over the years by the likes of James Joyce, Walt Whitman, William Blake and Rilke, among many others. On the atmospheric "Beyond the Fences" the evocative lyrics and music metaphorically address a place in which one gets immobilized, unable to take the leap into unknown or undiscovered country (the "middle scientific heads"). David says, "I was living in a one room apartment in a horse-barn in Indiana when I wrote 'Beyond the Fences,' and I used to climb the fence, and lay in a field with two or three horses wandering around, and stare at the stars." The narrator of "Easy Mistake" humanly and humorously grapples with any notion of "trying to do the right thing":

i hopped up into my truck
but i headed to the wrong bar
got way too f**ked-up
started wishin' on the wrong star
but the sky, man, it's so large....
that's just an easy mistake

And Corley's fiercely expressive voice soars to tell his "Dog Tales" wrestling with a character who has "crossed insane fields" while "Unspoken Thing" speaks to a time when Corley was living off the land in a log cabin in the mountains of Georgia for a number of years, exploring simplicity and silence.

Multi-instrumentalist and producer Hugh Christopher Brown raved: "To say I was arrested by David's voice is a mild way of saying it almost eclipsed the majesty of his writing. The two elements combine as well and fountain, and the source seems eternal. I am fascinated by David's art; his language is as open as his phrasing. As mysterious as it sometimes gets, it's the farthest thing from arbitrary there is."

Corley (vocals, piano, guitar, bass) is accompanied by a formidable group of musicians: Gregor Beresford (drums), Hugh Christopher Brown (piano, hammond b-3, clavinet, wurlitzer, vocals), Tony Scherr (bass, guitar), Kate Fenner and Sarah McDermott (background vocals).

Description

David Corley endured a not-so-idyllic childhood on a horse farm in the town of Lafayette in Indiana despite loving, close knit family relations with his grandma Annabelle, mother Sarah, sister Annie and their two dogs "Moose" and "Ox". One of the banes of his early existence came in the form of piano lessons. David says, "The repetitive scales and endless rotation of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' and 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' drove me insane and forced me to run away many days. "I would walk the four miles home from my piano teacher's house down gravel roads and through cornfields 'til my mom finally agreed to not make me go back." He began practicing the piano on his own, teaching himself songs from the radio and the stacks of eclectic sheet music lying around the house and quickly began to pen his own tunes. His sister Annie recalls, "David would hide or throw a fit to get out of going to lessons..but we always had a piano in the house and all of a sudden we would hear him playing so many great songs and I still have some of his earliest gems in my head..."
When he was nineteen, David had a series of ecstatic visionary and mystical experiences. After leaving the University of Georgia at the age of 20, he travelled across the country delivering trucks, and began to read and write obsessively. By the time he went back to University of Georgia (to study computer science?), he started to develop his voice as a songwriter, often breaking in to the Fine Arts Building to play his wild, original music on a grand piano in the middle of the night. His subsequent jaunts led him to Westport, Connecticut, to perfect his bar tending and roofing skills and settled for a time in New York City and Venice Beach, California for further forays in mixology and bar napkin poetry, among other "jack of all trade" jobs, which then drove him to live off the land for a few years in a remote cabin on a mountain in Georgia. If his heart hadn't exploded at the age of 40, David reckons he would still be there...but chose to recover from his surgery in his hometown of Lafayette, Indiana. At the age of 53, Corley releases his debut album, Available Light, produced by Canadian multi- instrumentalist Hugh Christopher Brown.