Far From Refuge

For those of you who don't know, I have a very good friend, Cory Mon, who plays music locally. His band, Cory Mon & the Starlight Gospel, released a live DVD/CD this past weekend and had a release show to kick it off. The show was at Velour which coincidently was where the DVD was filmed. The DVD has some serious film and audio quality. Its very professionally done. The only other recording Cory has had before this was a CD that seems like it was recorded ages ago that he doesn't even play songs from anymore. Needless to say I was very excited to get this little gem in my hands. Cory's music can be classified as somewhat of an acoustic/folk/rock/funk/blues with deep introspective lyrics. I will admit that Cory's style of music is normally not my style, but I was at first impressed with his live show and later gained an appreciation for his actual music. Also, the tunes that he plays now are, in my opinion, 10 times better than his old songs. I believe he has the talent, charisma, and "image" (unfortunately this is important in the music industry today) to make it in the music business outside of Utah.

Ok, so back to the show. This show was supposed to be a big one for Cory, obviously because he is releasing something that is high quality and spent a lot of money out of pocket on. After creating a sweet poster and putting them up around, he also promoted on myspace and facebook. He also got a sweet article in the Daily Herald, unfortunately titled Music Mon(way lame and cheesy), about his upcoming show and his music in general. Pretty sweet if you ask me.

The line-up of the show was also way sweet. Dave Eaton, a local artist, opened up the show. I like some of his tunes, but his show the last few times was sloppy to me and I didn't enjoy it. After Dave Eaton was Code Hero. My wonderful friend, roommate, landlord, and sometimes late night snuggler, Justin Huntington, plays drums for Code Hero. They are a way sweet band who plays what Donnie and I have dubbed Space Alt-Country. Its like alternative and country mixed with keyboards and cool computery sounds. They played a new song called, I believe, "I See Blue" which was absolutely amazing. The song on its own was cool but to make it even more sweet, Justin plays the drum tracks with a Nintendo Wii controller. Apparently it runs on bluetooth and they rig something up with the laptop. So he just stands up in front and bangs on air with the Wii controller to make the drum beats. Very cool in my opinion. After Code Hero was Matt Jennings. Matt Jennings is a touring artist from Minnesota who actually looks a lot like my brother-in-law Zach. Really weird. He IS actually the brother of a fairly big artist Mayson Jennings. He IS NOT, however, related to Waylan Jennings, Shooter Jennings, Peter Jennings, or Greg Jennings (the Green Bay Packers receiver). We gave him a bunch of crap about being related to all of them the whole night. He was cool about though. His music is very spanish-esque. Hard to explain but interesting no less.



After Matt Jennings, Cory took the stage. He started off with a solo song tentatively called Snubbs after my car, and also me. I believe the song will officially be called Her Honesty on the cd. Anyways, its a little ditty with just him, his acoustic guitar, and a harmonica. Yes he does all three by himself. Its a sweet song. Then the Starlight Gospel came on the stage. My other roommate, Jeff Stone also plays guitar with Cory (see the picture above). Jeff is quite tall and skinny, and significantly dwarfs Cory onstage, so its always funny to watch them. Actually Jeff is taller than everyone else in the band. Pretty funny to see on stage. Regardless though, Jeff adds some sweet back up vocals and complimentary guitar parts to the song that would sound a little empty without him. The past few times I have seen Cory he has opened for other people such as Peter Breinholdt(sp?), so he hasn't gotten a long set. Since this show was his, he played for awhile which was nice. I seriously think this was probably his best performance that I have ever seen. I highly recommend checking out his music as well as Code Hero's.

Cory Mon & the Starlight Gospel

Code Hero

If you click on the links above you can listen to some songs by each artist. Of course they are free of charge.