“A lot of people know me as a guitar player, but I want to showcase my production”: Cory WongThere are some musicians who simply cannot sit still. As enterprising and creative as they are prolific, it’s as if such artists have endless reserves of energy— or perhaps time in their universe moves at half-speed, allowing double the productivity. Whatever the secret, Cory Wong belongs firmly in that category. And given the speed of his guitar playing, it may well prove the half-speed-universe theory in more ways than one.

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As a member of eminent funk outfit Vulfpeck, the Grammy nominee is set to headline London’s biggest indoor stage in July. He’s also about to embark on an extensive solo tour of North and South America with his new studio album Lost In The Wonder, a helter-skelter pop-funk record replete with collaborations which he produced and mixed himself.
He continues to self-produce his variety series Cory and the Wongnotes, and hosts the Wong Notes podcast, welcoming guests from Joe Satriani to Jacob Collier to Joe Walsh. His website offers a link to the Cory Wong Guitar Course, where he guides you through chord voicings, right-hand technique, practice methods and even his own ‘signature moves’. If that all sounds like hard work, it’s because it is. But for Wong, it’s all in the name of one painfully simple thing:
“I’m chasing what’s fun for me,” he reflects from his Minneapolis studio. “I’m chasing things that will challenge my artistry and creativity. So if those things all align on the Venn diagram, that’s what’s fun for me.”
Watching any of Wong’s concert films, it’s hard to reach any other conclusion. A funk-laden thrill ride backed by virtuosic brass and rhythm sections, the Stratocaster-armed Wong assumes a master-of-ceremonies role. He exuberantly bounds about the stage while welcoming a revolving door of guests — all, of course, without missing a beat. It’s no surprise that with Lost In The Wonder, Wong saw an opportunity to set himself another challenge.
Image: Press
“A lot of people know me as a guitar player— and rightfully so, because I’m a guitar guy!” says Wong. “But with this album, I wanted to really showcase a lot more of my songwriting, my production and my arranging. And then ask, how can I make the guitar the showcase instrument within all that other stuff?”
Wong’s voracious appetite for collaboration has so far led to his playing with a litany of venerable players; Jon Batiste, The Jonas Brothers, Bruce Hornsby, Billy Strings, Tom Misch and Victor Wooten— even Gene Simmons is on the list. Lost In The Wonder leans into that dynamic even further, with guests including Taylor Hanson, Devon Gilfillian, Stephen Day, Cody Fry, Yam Haus, Louis Cato and Magic City Hippies featured in various iterations across every one of its tracks.
“It was really fun to make this album and do collaborations with people where I can approach it more like a ‘producer’ type-guy, you know?” He laughs. “In a similar way that a lot of other people in the pop world do it. You look at the EDM world, [where] somebody like Zedd produces and works with a lot of other artists. Those sorts of folks have really inspired me. Really, my aim with this album is to ask: How can I draw something out of these collaborators that maybe they wouldn’t do on their own albums? How can I offer them a space and a creative outlet to do something a little bit different, but still showcase their artistry? And I ask the same of them: ‘I want you to draw something different out of me. Let’s find out what we can pull from each other, how we can grow each other’s artistry in this collaboration.’ With this album, I really wanted to continue to explore that. Again, it’s fun!”

Today, Wong is among the most lauded guitar players anywhere. He even has signature guitars with Fender and Music Man. But with great power comes great responsibility; the history of his craft is peppered with shred-fest soloing and braggadocious machismo. He’s capable of this, and it’s a thrill when the man lets rip. But how does such an energised performer and prolific instrumentalist keep the balance?
“There’s a long history of the guitar being this thing where we’re showboating our technical facility,” Wong says. “Or just constantly shredding guitar. And there’s a time and place for that— I like a lot of that music. But that’s not really what I want to do, and that’s not really what I feel is the most compelling part of my artistry.
“Sure, there are times where it’s like, ‘Let’s give them the fireworks! I’m going to get out there and shred.’ But I like the sound of other instruments. I like the arrangement. So much of what I’m doing requires me to be a band leader; I need to use my taste and my influences to arrange for different things. When you listen to the Duke Ellington big band, it’s not just about the piano.”
When it came to making Lost In The Wonder, Wong’s proclivity for collaboration naturally presented him with a surfeit of potential guests— not least those with whom he has played for years, such as Vulfpeck’s own Theo Katzman. The process of choosing guests for the album was once again demonstrative of Wong’s confidently whimsical approach to the record. “It was just, ‘What feels fun to do?’ He explains. “What do I want to explore?” Doubtless, that approach also required him to be light on his feet and adaptable; not tied to any one studio or band but taking contributions from practitioners wherever time and space allowed.
“For instance, somebody like [producer and artist] Ellis,” Wong continues. “I was in London, doing another session thing for somebody. I was like, ‘Hey, I’m going to be over at this studio, Sleeper Sounds, I’m just kind of hanging and writing. You want to come by and do something?’ He’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll take the train down. Let’s hang for the afternoon!’ And we just sat down and wrote this tune together, The Big Payoff, and got the skeleton and some of the meat on it. Then I sent it over to my horn section leader, Michael Nelson. So it ended up getting done in three different studios.

“With Benny Sings, I flew to Amsterdam, and we wrote and recorded the song in the studio in one day. With Magic City Hippies, I had a song idea, and I sent it over to them. They were like, ‘Ok, here’s where we’re hearing this going!’ They added some different things. They sent it back to me. I said, ‘Ok, try this.’ They did some stuff, sent it back. It was all remote. So the process is always different. It’s just about what works for the collaborators and what we’re doing.”
The boyish energy Wong brings to his recordings extends to the technical aspects of creating Lost In The Wonder, with a surprisingly light guitar setup. While most of the recording was conducted at Minneapolis’ Creation Audio with producer John Fields (“a close friend of mine, one of the best producers”), the heart of Wong’s own setup— specifically when it comes to capturing his guitar playing— is startlingly simple.
“I don’t need them to have fancy outboard gear,” he says. “I track into a Universal Audio Apollo, just using the internal preamps, you know, just one rack space. I don’t need a whole rack of extra gear. If you have that, cool! But just get me the good sounds. I don’t care as long as the sounds are good. Because the musician and the decisions that they make is going to be the most compelling thing. How can you capture the essence of that? How can you capture that in the most pure way? A lot of times, for my guitar, it’s just plugging directly into the console. If you listen to a lot of the early Prince rhythm guitar stuff, or a lot of the Nile Rodgers guitar stuff, that’s what a lot of that is. Direct into the console.”
As for the next step along the signal chain, when it comes to Cory Wong, a custom guitar can only be followed by custom software. In this case, the product of a collaboration between the artist and venerable plugin developer Neural DSP.
Image: Press
“Most of the time, I use the Archetype: Cory Wong X plugin that I helped create with Neural DSP. There’s basically an emulation of an SSL console and a Neve console; there are characteristics of both hidden in there. But then there are also very clean amps in there.”
With filtering, compression, overdrive, cabinet simulation, room simulation and more available with the Archetype: Cory Wong X, the fact that Wong himself uses it must be evidence of its success, I offer.
“I was like, ‘The only way this thing goes out is if I am 100% satisfied, and if you are 100% satisfied,” Wong remembers saying to Neural DSP. “They sent me version one, and it was pretty good. And we made revisions. By version five, I was still like, not yet. It is great, but I don’t plug into it right now and think, ‘I have to use this for everything’. So we got to, like, version nine!”
If there’s one thing Lost In The Wonder demonstrates as much as Cory Wong’s propensity to stretch himself, it’s his willingness to back himself— and perhaps most impressive of all is the fact that it has yielded ample rewards on both fronts.
If time does indeed move at half-speed for the lightning-quick guitar player, he’s sure allowed plenty of it to pass before entering the new chapter of an ever-ascending career, positioning himself as an enabling force within the remarkable mechanics of his own artistic output. It’s a fresh precedent for Cory Wong the Producer, another unequivocal string added to the prolific artist’s already substantial bow.
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