Cornell & Carr release debut album
WE GO WAY BACK
January 14th 2019
Cornell & Carr celebrate their combined musical histories on their first album aptly titled, We Go Way Back, released January 25.
Adam Brand introduced Matt Cornell and Mike Carr a few years ago but they soon discovered Mike’s father Warren Carr, and Matt’s father Wayne Cornell and mother Cheryl Assange used to perform together. Matt and Mike then performed as part of Adam Brand and The Outlaws.
“When we were working on the first single, Be In The Band, we weren’t sure what the album was going to be like, or how the songs would sound, but that song itself is about being true to yourself, cutting through all the BS, so that was direction we stuck to, to make it all come together. “It’s kind of a metaphor for if you don’t like what you’re doing, change it, and if you do, don’t let it go for anything.”
Matt has enjoyed a very successful solo career over recent years, and Mike enjoys continued success with his comedy alter-ego Buddy Goode, but this album for them is about establishing the duo as a serious standalone project, not just a one-off album.
“We are putting everything we have into Cornell & Carr,” Matt said.
“Hopefully, the music will speak for itself and we are able to make a real go of it.”
Mike said that working with Matt had helped him come out from ‘behind the wig and glasses’ of his alter ego Buddy Goode. “For me, it’s like a mid-life epiphany, not a crisis, but an epiphany! A lot of things have changed in my life over the past few years,” he said. “My family and closest friends have helped me rediscover Mike Carr. I’ve had some great times during my music career but, like most people, it’s the lows that convince you that you really suck. I know if Matty hadn’t asked me to do this, I’d probably spend the rest of my life hiding behind the wig and glasses.”
Matt said the timing was perfect for both of them and now Cornell & Carr were looking forward to see where it goes. “As an artist, whether someone comes to a show and they’re fully engrossed in the music, or they’re listening to an album on the lounge or in the car, your job is to entertain them,” Matt said. “This album is a really great balance of anthemic songs, uplifting songs, and a couple of really personal songs that we hope people will enjoy. I just want them to get lost in our songs.”
A strong lyric, a strong melody and a few laughs along the way is what it’s all about for them.
“When anyone sits down to listen to an album, it’s at that time both the listener and the artist share a special bond without knowing it,” Mike said.
“If a song makes a person feel a certain way, I’m pretty sure that’s the way the writer was feeling when they wrote it, so a song is like an automatic connection between total strangers - that’s the power of music.”
We Go Way Back is available for pre-order from January 14 and Cornell & Carrwill launch it at Wests on Friday, January 25 at 5pm at the Tamworth Country Music Festival.
The album is now available for pre-order from all digital retailers.
“We Go Way Back was the first song we wrote for the album after we’d been sitting around talking about everything we’d done together, and we said ‘we go way back’, and that’s our story,” Mike said.
The idea for the album was born from what was to be a one-off show at the 2018 Tamworth Country Music Festival. It was obvious to everyone in the audience at the January show that musical magic had been born on that stage.
“It was more than the music, more than being on stage together; it was about seeing the faces in the crowd,” Mike said. There’s a lot we wanted to write about, and you don’t get the platform to do it very often, so it was important for us to make the music and the message as good as we could make it.”
They return 12 months later to the same stage to launch We Go Way Back.
“It was hard getting together to work on the songs, as I had just moved to Queensland and Mike lives in Sydney, but once we got started, we used all the things that were happening in our lives at that time to write songs about, and the songs were written quite quickly,” Matt said.