Watch Cory Wong Quartet Perform ‘Unplugged’ For ‘Red Rocks Trail Mix Session’

Cory Wong took the opportunity to capture a Red Rocks Trail Mix Session while at the scenic Colorado venue to perform on a bill with Umphrey's McGee and Daniel Donato. The guitarist offered “unplugged” songs from his solo catalog along with a The Fearless Flyers tune.

Wong and his band — bassist Yohannes Tona, keyboardist Kevin Gastonguay and drummer Petar Janjic — kicked off the session with Fearless Flyers cut, “Flyers Direct,” off 2019’s The Fearless Flyers II.

Cory then gave some insight into his arrangement process:

When somebody signs up to listen to a guitar-led band they might assume it’s going to be a bunch of shredding and a traditional like guitar hero sort of band or whatever. And for me I like doing that sometimes, but I don’t always want the guitar to be the lead voice all the time. It’s the arrangements and it’s choosing when and what to do and what to feature at any given moment. And a lot of what I do on the guitar, the more compelling things that I do, the things that are more unique to my voice is rhythm guitar. So I kind of build a lot of my compositions and arrangements around things that are very percussive, very rhythmic. But they’re all hooks.

Case in point, “Pebbles,” the song the band played next from Wong’s April 2022 record, Power Station. Cory then gave a very cool take on how he doesn’t draw inspirations so much from other music but from beautiful landscapes, like Red Rocks, or a piece of art.

Next up, the quartet played some “Team Sports” from Wong’s January 2020 LP Elevator Music for an Elevated Mood and stuck with Elevator Music to close with “Airplane Mode.”

Watch Cory Wong’s Red Rocks Trail Mix Session below:

Catch Cory Wong on the road. Scroll down for his tour routing and ticket info.