Guitar whiz Kenny Cordray offers a little of "Everything"

Article by Andrew Dansby. May 18, 2012

One of Houston’s greatest guitarists, Kenny Cordray has played just about everything in a career that spans more than 40 years. So it’s no great surprise that on the new “It Takes Everything” Cordray and Love Street have applied a kitchen sink approach to making an album. The album includes straight blues, and fuzzed out psych-rock blues, some cinematic instrumentals and a few songs that allow him to stretch out on acoustic guitar. It’s a stylistic travelogue that represents Cordray’s far-flung tastes as well as his travelogue of afar-flung career that included co-writing ZZ Top’s “Francine” as well as playing in Houston with the psych-rock band the Children, tenure along side the late legendary jazz bassist Jaco Pastorious in flamboyant soul singer Wayne Cochran’s C.C. Riders and also a period spent in the Canadian soft-rock band Skylark with future super-producer David Foster. Cordray talked about his long, winding career and his new album.

Q: I love the lines you play along with yourself on “Heal.” Did you hear all that at once? Or Did you play a part and build it from there?
A: That was a case of playing something that leads to something else. I had that spooky part and was working on it and would up with the other things. That one’s going to be tricky to play live because it’s so atmospheric. In this hurry-up-and-get-paid world, that tune takes a lot of time to go somewhere. But people have come to me and told me it speaks to them, which is nice to hear.

Q: Is there a story behind “Joolia”? Did you plan for it to be acoustic guitar plus strings?
A: That one’s for my daughter. It was the first acoustic thing I’d written in years that I was willing to play for somebody. I played it for the guys and it was like, “$#!+ we’re going to need Paul English to come up with strings for that.” And then it was “$#!+ we’re going to have to go to Rice and record the real strings.” But it was great, it was like some kind of musical daydream.

Q: You’re best known for playing loud electric. Is the acoustic something you do a lot? Or was this a new development?
A: Acoustic is what I play at home. My wife and kids, they all hear me play acoustic and they’d tell you that’s the real me. They hear me in that rather than what I do behind the amps and all that. I really truly love to play the acoustic. I’ve done some different things, some Latin stuff before. But never like this where I put it out and let people hear it. I just bought a used Martin a few months ago. I’m really in love with acoustics. It’s my real voice really.

Q: You seemed to be in a great place to see Jaco’s rise. Did it seem to you like he was just coming into his own when you guys played together?
A: Oh yeah, I saw his whole metamorphosis that year with him on the bus. Everything he went on to do, I saw him putting together. It was incredible. Jaco hired me to be in Cochran’s band. He was hard on me, but in a good way. “Here’s what you need to know to survive, kid,” that kind of thing. (Laughs.) That was the best thing about Jaco, his whole thing was about keeping it simple. Just go out and do it.

Q: Any enduring memories of working with Cochran?
A: Oh my memory of that time with Wayne was incredible. He was like my dad. I joined Wayne’s group when I was 18. And they were a hard-core road band so I got the Baptism by fire. Each night he’d tear the club apart. They’d play these R&B songs and I was just like “How’d I get here?” I was scared to death. My favorite memory of Wayne was playing Las Vegas. We’d play there and he wouldn’t change his act at all. Just gung-ho R&B. He was a consummate performer.

Q: Turn on Your Love Light was a nice inclusion that brought it all back to Houston.
A: Yeah, that’s what we played with Jaco to bring Wayne on stage with. That was the fanfare song, the opener of the show. That lick was written by a guy from New Orleans, Charles Brent, who was the funkiest guitarist in the world. That was one of the things that stuck with me. So we borrowed that and took it in another direction. It was just something we wanted to do with that gnarly opening.