In an era when digital perfection defines pop production, The Sun Sessions by Canadian singer-songwriter Cory M. Coons arrives as a deliberate act of rebellion. Recorded live at Memphis’s legendary Sun Studio, the four-song EP embraces the rough edges and human texture that once defined American roots music. Coons, a veteran of the road and studio, strips his sound to its bare essentials—voice, guitar, and tape hiss—and in doing so, finds something both timeless and intimate.
The opening track, “Crumbs ’24,” revisits one of Coons’ early songs from 2004, now reimagined to mark its 20th anniversary. The arrangement is sparse, almost skeletal, yet every note feels charged with memory. Coons recorded it in a single take, live to half-inch reel-to-reel tape, using vintage microphones and minimal processing. The result isn’t flawless—it breathes, wobbles, and sometimes leans out of tune—but that’s its virtue. You can hear the air in the room, the faint scrape of strings, and the conviction of a performer who trusts emotion over precision.
His new single, “Memphis Whiskey Blues,” finds Coons leaning deeper into Southern idiom. Built on a slow, swinging rhythm and sung with a weary, knowing smile, the song lives somewhere between confession and celebration. Its refrain—“I got them Memphis whiskey blues, and I don’t know what to do”—feels like a conversation with ghosts. You can sense the shadow of Sun Studio’s past in every phrase: the ghosts of Presley, Cash, and Perkins hover not as burdens, but as benevolent presences, urging him on.
Elsewhere, “Faded Glory (Land of the Free)” carries a quiet political edge, reflecting on ideals eroded but not lost. It’s less a protest song than a plea for humility and empathy—a reminder that roots music, at its best, has always balanced the personal and the communal. Coons closes with a buoyant Elvis medley of “Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cruel,” performed live and loose, more homage than imitation.
Across The Sun Sessions, Coons honors the analog era not as nostalgia, but as a living discipline. In rejecting perfection, he reclaims presence. The imperfections—the hiss, the creaks, the soft edges—become the soul of the recording. In a digital world, The Sun Sessions insists on something radical: that the truth of music still lives in the human breath behind it.
–John Parker
