Q&A: Lubriphonic Guitarist Giles Corey

Giles Corey came to Chicago to play music at age 18, and literally jammed his way into the scene. By the time he had formed Lubriphonic in 2002, he had spent time working with some of the city’s biggest names like Buddy Guy, Otis Rush and Koko Taylor.

Patch spoke with Corey Tuesday while he was in Florida spending some time with his folks before his tour kicks off. Lubriphonic plays at the 8x10 in Baltimore Saturday.

Patch: What is it about the Chicago music scene that produces bands like Lubriphonic?

Giles Corey: There’s a lot of live music going in, not just in Chicago, but around Chicago, which is sadly not common in the rest of country. It used to be every town would have one live music venue, that’s not the case anymore. You can still kind of make a living as a musician in the Chicagoland area.

There’s the blues influences that came up from down south, there’s a lot of country influences that came up…gospel arguably had its birth in Chicago…it was a big stop in the heyday of jazz. It’s at this intersection of everything. Everything kind of came from some place else, but it’s a city where a lot of cultures came together and a lot of music was either born there and refined there.

P: There’s a lot of influences and sounds in the band’s music, if you had to define what Lubriphonic plays, what would you say?

GC: The short answer is funk, soul and rock ‘n’ roll. It’s sort of James Brown meets Led Zeppelin…It’s all of those Chicago influences mixed together in a rock ‘n’ roll format.

P: Obviously, you must have had to change up your performance style a bit when you made the switch from a sideman to a frontman. What did you find was the biggest challenge?

GC: I guess really just the responsibility of it and the hard work that it is. When you’re sort of working as sideman it’s really not you’re a** on the line. There’s not a lot to worry about it as long as you do your job, that’s it. Even though I had fronted bands in the past, it had always been one offs or as a kid. When you really go on the road and you’re playing a festival set, you gotta be on for 90 minutes and you make sure the band is on and together and you gotta make sure your connecting with an audience and being entertaining…I learned a lot by watching people, in retrospect, stuff that maybe at the time I was watching but wasn’t really processing.

P: Lubriphonic is a live band, and every band has their own improvisational chemistry. What’s unique about Lubriphonic’s brand of live jamming?

GC: Even though we do play on certain jamband festivals and bills and that, I wouldn’t really call it a jamband necessary, we come out of the Chicago R&B and blues tradition, where jamming will get you kind of a stink-eye where you’re just searching. It’s sort like get in make your statement, connect with your audience…but if you’re not, get out, and make way for someone else or make way for the song. It’s just different approach.

P: Is it tough to capture the band’s sound in the studio?

GC: For one thing, none of us like being there...To have any opportunity of having a mix, you have to isolate everything, which isn’t a natural sound, and you have where to headphones, which is a very unnatural way to make music. It takes us a minute to kind of adjust to the situation to where we can actually get a good performance.

P: What’s on tap in the future?

GC: We’re developing the songs on the road…Once we got enough material for the studio [we’ll start recording].

We’ll do something at a rehearsal or a soundcheck. We won’t play it live unless we feel absolutely confident and comfortable with it…We don’t really sit down and talk about it. Certain things change, different players try different stuff. It just sort of amorphously develops. We don’t sit down and pick it apart. It sort of grows organically on its own. It sort of becomes the song its gonna be. Even songs from previous albums, as we do them, keep changing.

Lubriphonic plays at the 8x10, at 10 E. Cross Street, Baltimore, Saturday. Doors are at 8 p.m. and J Pope and Funk Friday opens. Call 410-625-2000 for tickets.