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Verse Cory CHisel For temptation let me ply Be my wings, Lord, be my eyes —TVZ, “Upon My Soul,” from The Nashville Sessions C oryChiselandtheWanderingSons’debutEPCabinGhosts(2008) weaves corresponding measures of Billy Joe Shaver’s grit and Townes Van Zandt’s grace through six portraits of infinite motion . The album’s closing song “Home in the Woods” provides Chisel’s mission statement of searching and solitude: “Don’t mess with me, mama, I’m a mighty good man / I’ll take a home in the woods by myself if I can.” Cory Chisel, born in Elko, Wisconsin, followed with the fulllength album Death Won’t Send a Letter (2009).1 “IfIdobelieveinspirituality,theonlyevidenceIhaveissongwriting,” Chisel says. “There is a haunting of sorts that can often be confused as a Cory Chisel. Courtesy www.corychisel.com 42 VerSe spiritualintervention.Myfatherwasaminister,sotherearesomethings I can’t figure out if I learned or if it’s something miraculous. Have you ever seen a Baptist minister pour into the closing segment of a sermon? The cadence of a sermon can be so close to a song that a minister can almost start singing. It’s like a hypnotic state, and you get to this place that’s affecting you and really close behind it is melody. “There’s a state you can get into where finding a song is just cracking the surface. It’s like picking a potato. It was already growing there, and you can just pull it out. I don’t know if it’s a different form of songwriting, but I know when I hear it. “Townes Van Zandt would definitely be one of those people. People always call his music otherworldly, and that’s why. It’s not bizarre; it’s very familiar to you. It’s worth talking about. So many people say, ‘Oh, I love how Townes has such a plain way of saying things.’ Yeah, but it’s eerilyplain.It’sverysimilartoascripturebeinghandeddown.Myfriend [the songwriter] Richard Julian used to hang with Townes. He’d say that you’d talk and there’d be the normal Townes, and in a minute, he’d find a point and become elevated and transcendent. “I’ve seen that happen to my father when he’s preaching. One minute , he’s my father; the next, he’s a preacher; then, he’s in possession of something of more importance, something of higher value. The religious aspects—the dogma, the Bible, stuff like that—none of that was interesting to me, but I definitely at times have felt in possession of a power that feels strange, and songs would come out of it. “YoualmostlearntohateaguylikeTownessomuch.Insteadofwriting volumestoconveysomething,hecouldwritetwolinesandsumupevery complex entity that you were trying to put together in fifteen pages.”2 ...

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