INTERVIEW: Joshua Corum – Head With Wings

Set to break boundaries with their storytelling debut album, From Worry To Shame is HEAD WITH WINGS. The duo create beauty within darkness, writing about subjects that might cause controversy such as school shootings and murder, their approach is hard-hitting. We managed to sit and have a chat with Joshua Corum before the album’s release to talk about their latest record, the inspiration for the lyrical content, how they approached such sensitive subjects and more.

So for people who aren’t familiar to HEAD WITH WINGS, can you explain your sound?

Josh: What it is now is a bit different than what it was supposed to be when we first started the band. It’s gone through a few phases so I look at it as a continuation of 90s alternative rock sound. Taking a bit of hard rock and fusing it with some progressive elements and I think the progressive elements probably come more from the themes in our music, maybe not even necessarily the music itself, just the way it is put together. How the sounds interact with the words and how everything comes together with the concepts, the imagery and how that is all portrayed, I think that is what is most progressive about us. But, at its core, we probably could have said we are a hard rock band. Some of my colleagues and collaborators tend to fight me on that! I guess maybe, deep down, I wish I was in a hard rock band, maybe that is why I keep saying it, but progressive rock seems to work for us, it can’t be a bad thing to be seen as progressive in any facet of life.

Do you think that down the line you may incorporate more of a hard rock sound in to HEAD WITH WINGS?

Josh: Yeah, I guess to elaborate a little further on the sound in general, Brandon, the other song-writer in the band, he’s truly the more progressive orientated composer in the band. Some reviews have been pointing out “oh it’s a bit singer-songwriterish with some progressive flair” and I think that’s true. On my end, I write most of the music on acoustic guitar and then it gets translated into this electric format so that’s my half of the contribution. And then you have Brandon‘s composition which is a bit more forward-thinking, and arguably, more ambitious. I imagine you’ve heard the song In Dark Motel Rooms by now, but I kind of look at that as a hard rock song. That’s track eight on the album and I guess I’d like to write more songs like that, that just have a bit more of a aggressive edge to them because a lot of what I do, on my own, tends to be more singer-songwriter. So yeah, I think I would like that part of HEAD WITH WINGS‘ sound to develop more on the next album or maybe the one after that as we’ve got a lot of the next album done already!

So yourself and HEAD WITH WINGS are releasing your debut album, From Worry To Shame, in a matter of days. How are you feeling about the record?

Josh: I’m very enthusiastic! The past few months have really opened me up to what it feels like to have people all over the world embrace your music. The response so far has largely been positive, I’m really stoked for Friday, in a matter of days there will be a stream of the album before it’s release so that’s when I’ll be anxious to see how people are embracing the other seven songs that haven’t been released yet during the campaign.

So what have been people been reacting to what HEAD WITH WINGS have already released?

Josh: Well, at least from the people who are being vocal with me, people that write to me on social media and send messages, it’s been overwhelmingly positive. It seems that people are really connecting a lot with the the vocal melodies, the lyrics, the themes. I think there is a lot to relate too on the album and people are connecting a lot with the darker themes which I thought would be challenging for people right away. I’d be the first to tell you that the album takes a bit of time to grow on the listener, it even did for me being one of the writers! It was never meant to be something that when you snap your fingers you connect with it. But hey, if that’s how some of the tracks come across then that’s amazing! I think it’s only a good thing if progressive bands end up being a bit more marketable or easier to pick up but still are ambitious and forward-thinking. I think that’s a great quality to have.

The album’s narrative is quite heavy. Can you elaborate on this as we know a large majority of the themes are based on a personal tragedy that you’ve gone through? Can you explain how that experience has affected the influence?

Josh: I can say that some of these terrible things that I cite as being influential to the creation of the album, a few of these incidents such as the murder of my cousin in 2008, the Sandy Hook Shooting in 2012, all of these things happened during a pretty impressionable time of my life when I was attending college. If you were to parallel that with where I was as a musician, I was still in a infancy stage. I always wanted to do a concept album, I’d always have this vision of what I wanted to create but I didn’t have the tools to do so yet. So going through those kind of tragedies and living through it and letting it steep for a few years, kind of provided a bit of fodder to be able to translate that into my work. With that said, there’s no direct point on the album, my actual cousin isn’t a character on the album, it’s more the element of voyeurism, stalking, kidnapping. There’s a bit of that which plays out towards the end of the album so you get that component. The beginning of the album, on track two, our main character who is a school teacher, has to witness the murder of his daughter at a school that he teaches at. It happens to be a religiously orientated school so these people are targeted and he has to bear the weight of that it was his decision to put her in that school. Of course, no one thinks a shooting is going to happen at a school that they teach at, maybe people are more fearful these days, but certainly he never thought that it would but it did. When you compound that with the story which is an exposition about how before any external tragedies occurred, he was already damaging his relationship with his child and wife by being an alcoholic and just someone that really tapped into his personal vices more than being someone who really cared deeply for his family. Or at least showed that the cared. So you move into track two and his family is being taken from him, it’s kind of like a story where it’s up to the viewer by the end of it to work out how they look at our protagonist. There’s certainly redeeming qualities but it’s really up to the listener to decide if he’s good or bad or not at all.

Was it difficult emotionally to put this all together?

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. It’s not why the production took years, that is its own story, but I think I needed that time. I needed the extra time because the production was taking longer and longer, there was a longer waiting period, I really seized that extra time to make peace with the lyrical content. It gave me plenty of time to revise it and really shape it up to how the songs flow. Each songs jumps and flows through times of this family’s life so it’s not something that just could be done in a few days, it was a very meticulous process. As I mentioned before, having time to steep on a lot of these ideas, and making peace with a lot of the tragedy, I was able to include it in the work in a way that, at least as time went on, that didn’t get me too hung up on it. Song-writing, and in particular writing lyrics, is definitely a gruelling experience for me. It’s not something that comes easy, I can tell you that much, it’s not something that can be forced. It’s therapeutic in a lot of ways and still, it comes down to performing the material, there’s no telling if it’s going to catch me out. I get chocked up sometimes thinking about it and certainly singing it, it’s meant to be connected with on a deep level and as a writer, you can only hope that is how it comes across.

Were you worried at any point that some of the themes, like a school shooting for example, could come across as controversial?

Josh: Yeah and I think artistically we’re accomplishing our goal but, for example the Somewhere, Something Gives video, I don’t think it’s getting as much coverage as it should be. I think some types of media, I don’t know if they are afraid to cover it or they think their audience won’t connect with it, or if some journalists think it is too dark to cover, I just think they are missing out on something that is important and very relevant to what’s happening right now. It’s largely an issue in American society and I think it’s a shame that people are turning the other cheek to it. So with that said, it its controversial then so be it, I’d rather it be real than just another song.

So what is next for HEAD WITH WINGS after the album release?

Josh: Well, aside from continually writing for the next album which we’re really excited about, we’re submitting for some big tours. Some here in America, some in the UK. Our mission is too pretty much come out strong this year and play the album as much as we can out on the road. With that said, we’re very proud of our work and we don’t just want to play arbitrarily. What the means is that we have to take some long shots and try to win over some booking agents to be able to get on some bills with bands that are pretty big in modern progressive music. We are trying to by early Fall to be on the road with hopefully prog rock’s big bands.

Well, thank you for taking the time to talk to us today.

Josh: Thank you so much!

From Worry To Shame is out now via self-release.

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