Cory Hanson & Slowhand

The biography of one Cory Thomas Hanson should be an easy tale to tell, right? Kid’s been in the business about 15-16 years now... that’s not much, even if you’re a crazy-busy All-American psycho like our Cory. Easy to run down the deets on that. And he’s been noted by no less than guitar hero John Frusciante as an engrossing, inspired guitarist. Okay, pigeonholed as guitarist. Plus, he’s been in a band steadily for the last twelve years! So...a careerist! Easy peasy. Alas, it’s complicated beyond such simple formulations — for this is a tale of two Corys — at the very least.

Let’s get the roots uncovered quick: Cory’s a California Boy, come up in the 90s and aughts, an art school vet (CalArts, yo), and a musician since back in his youth. It runs in the family. He debuted back in the late aughts under the solo alias White Horses In Technicolor Everywhere. After that, he played a bit with Chad and the Meatbodies and Together Pangea before founding Wand in 2013. He’s written and lead-sung with them, rocking up six LPs with them to date. But here — on the last one, he played keyboards in all the tracks! So… not just a guitarist/singer, then. He does a bit of producing on the side too. And visual art. And of course, the reason you’re reading this right now is not because of no Wand, but rather, Cory Hanson! In addition to his steady-rolling discography with Wand, he’s been putting out solo LPs too since 2016. And those aren’t really like the Wand records at all. They have totally non-rock things like string orchestration and electronics as well as rock things like heavy guitar jams and they may be the best things he’s ever done. It’s not really up to us to say, though. Following 2021’s sophomore Cory album Pale Horse Rider and 2023’s “Cory-III” release, actually called Western Cum, he and Wand got one in — the insane Vertigo — and now Cory’s ready to release his latest solo effort, I Love People.

Cory has toured the country with himself as well as Wand, and made videos and jokes and stirred the pot on social media, which may be some form of modern art (again, not for us to say). In fact, who’s to say that he won’t be writing poetry or comic books in the years to come? It’s hard to see all that he does (false equivalence: the forest) behind his dazzling musical efforts (lame comparison: the trees) but not as hard as it is to see the future. Otherwise, a lot more of us would be billionaires or America’s next top Models, etc. Unfortunately these things take real doing. Fortunately for the (at least) two Corys, the doing of it all just comes natural. As for us, we look forward to seeing and hearing etc what they come up with next.