The Ride (SVVN Cinematic Remixes)

Earlier this year my good friend Jeremiah of SVVN remixed a few songs from my album, The Ride. I’m so happy with how these versions turned out and I hope you like them too. Jeremiah went about these remixes very detailed, I’ll let him explain:

“Creating cinematic remixes is one of my favorite expressions of SVVN. Cory Quintard, the singer-songwriter behind Volunteer, shared an early version of his album The Ride with me while we were in Africa working on a film project together. I listened to the album from beginning to end while we rode in a van from one rural area of Ghana to another. The songs felt expansive paired against the ever-changing backdrop of the African jungle rushing by outside the window. 

I loved the album’s production and how it sounded like an energetic live band, but I also heard quiet and profound stories hiding beneath the soaring guitars and dynamic drums. When we got home, I spent several months trying to capture and recreate the feelings I experienced while listening to the original version of the album on those bumpy dirt roads. 

I took an organic approach to the production of the remixes and avoided using synthesized sounds whenever possible. I’ve been obsessed with polyrhythmic muted acoustic fingerpicking, so I spent countless hours creating intricate patterns for songs like “Found You in the Fire” and “To Be Young.” For percussion, I played all the parts with my hands on an old snare drum and tom that had been lying around my studio for years. I stomped the ground for kick drums and layered them with 808’s to create body and precision. You’ll hear themes and motifs from the original recordings if you listen closely, but you have to listen very very closely. Grab some headphones and see if I’m telling the truth. I’ll wait.” – Jeremiah Dunlap, SVVN

Listen to the SVVN Cinematic Remixes EP here.

New Beginning

My new single, New Beginning, is out now. Buy / stream here.

I recorded New Beginning at the start of 2021. The last year has been so difficult for so many. I was fortunate to be one of the lucky ones. So many lost their incomes, their sense of purpose, their health, or even a loved one. Every person on Earth felt some level of loss in a new and unique fashion. Some days, I felt depressed and anxious. I felt afraid that music would go away or that nobody would ever care about it anymore. I felt this way about many things. As people started to get their shots, and things started opening up, I felt a tinge of hope. Hope that maybe we can be a little more empathetic to each other through all of us having lived in this shared tragedy. Maybe things can even be, dare I say, better than before? “That’s overly optimistic!” Maybe. But in my experience, death always gives way to new life. We can’t replace what we’ve lost. The people that are gone will leave a permanent void in our hearts. But there’s always a new chapter to step into. I wrote this song to remind myself that the past and the present don’t define the future, and there’s always another beginning as long as you are willing to look for it.

Love, Cory.

My new album, The Ride, is out now!

It happened. My debut album, “The Ride” is officially out! It’s been a strange year to release my first full length, but if there’s any theme that holds these songs together, it’s learning to accept and find enjoyment in the present – sitting still, and drawing life from the little joys of every day. I sincerely hope this album can become one of those small joys that brings you life and a sense of connection in some way. Thanks for listening to it, and thanks for being on the ride of life with me. 

The best way to spread music is by word of mouth. If you enjoy this album, would you share it online or with a friend? I’m grateful for every bit of your support!

Stream/buy The Ride

Pre-Order my first 12″ vinyl for my debut record, The Ride

Well, here’s the thing. I made an album. I’ve never made a full length album before, but after several years of releasing EP’s and singles, I felt the natural next step was to take the time to create a more complete work that summarized a season of my life where I grew from a young man into a slightly less young man. In this period, I moved to Nashville, fell in love, got married, stopped believing in some things, started believing in other things, and began a career as an artist and songwriter. It’s been a wonderful journey and I wouldn’t change a minute of it. 

So I found the songs I had written that best represented my journey to this point, and asked my best friend, Will Mikkelson to help me make an album. We holed ourselves up for six months in his basement studio until we thought it was finished. Now, it comes out November 20th, 2020. 

I’m excited to let you know you can now pre-order the 12″ vinyl of my upcoming full-length, album, The Ride, starting today. If you pre-order by October 16, 2020 you’ll get my next single a week before anyone else on Oct 16th and the album a whole two weeks before anyone else on Nov 6th!

Pre-order The Ride on 140g, black, 12″ vinyl here: https://volunteersounds.square.site/product/the-ride-vinyl/3

The vinyl will be going into production soon and will be shipping in December to arrive in time for the Christmas holiday! So if you’re starting to think about holiday gifts you can definitely gift a Volunteer vinyl now!

If you pre-order by or before Oct 16th you’ll also be helping me front the costs of pressing vinyl (it’s not cheap!) so PLEASE tell your friends, family, co-workers, neighbors to take a listen and support independent artists like myself by buying from the artist (hello, it’s me) directly. Thanks for the support, can’t wait for you to hear this album in 140g, vinyl soon!

Love, Cory.

Welcome to The Ride

“The Ride” is a break-up letter to my fear of death. Admittedly, it’s not a clean break. In these uncertain days, I’m sure many of us (and I’m no different) carry some anxiety around the topic on a daily basis.

I remember vividly the first real death of someone close to me. I was 11 years old. It was an uncle of mine. He was a young father and it was tragic and unexpected. I was playing MarioKart64 at my Grandma’s house when I found out. That day, my other uncle noticed me trying to conceal my emotion, and told me “Hey… you know. It’s okay to cry. Nobody expects you to be tough in a moment like this.” And so I did. I cried. That’s the memory I most commonly hold from that day. I took it to heart, too. I still do, to this day, cry in virtually every movie or book or Shark Tank episode I consume, if loss or tragedy is part of the story. Death is sad.

Even still, I went about life relatively unbothered by the thought of death for several years.

Then, about 7 years ago, I got in a horrible car accident on the way to a wedding. I was clipped (my fault) on the highway and flipped my SUV three-and-a-half times into a ditch. As every window shattered and I was suspended upside-down by my seatbelt, being violently jerked every which way, I thought this was surely the end of my life. As I screamed like someone who is about to pass in their early-twenties, the thought “at least I’ll die in my nice suit” did cross my mind. When eventually, the highly-rated-in-safety vehicle rolled one last time onto it’s side. I sat there in the stillest silence I can remember. I investigated my body, touched my face. No pain, no blood. I was in shock, but I had survived. As I cried on the side of the road for the next couple of hours in my affordably priced charcoal suit, somehow still freshly steamed, I told the police I felt fine. I really did.

Since I was a couple hours from home, and it seemed like too much of an ordeal to find a ride home, I hitched a ride to the wedding. I missed the ceremony. At the reception, a guest who was a doctor that had driven by the scene told me, “Son, people don’t walk away from accidents like that and dance at a wedding the same evening. It’s a miracle that you are okay.”

I didn’t realize it at that moment – the same way none of us ever realize in the moments where we are forever changed; but the event did just that. Over the next year, I recorded new songs, ended an unhealthy relationship, quit my comfy long-time job, and moved from Florida to Nashville with no prospects and a small savings, and started Volunteer. Now I knew, and I had the totaled SUV to prove it, that life is fragile, and all of it could end at any second – so why was I putting any of these things off?

Over the next couple of years and several dozen hours of therapy, I’d learn to stop people-pleasing and instead, listen to my heart. I’d stop delaying my joy until I got what I wanted in life, and start practicing gratitude now. I’d stop thinking the world was against me, and start thinking that maybe things are actually working out for my good, and that maybe I can rest in that instead of living out of my worries and anxieties all the time. I’d release any semblance of control I thought I had, and start trusting that I can step out onto limbs, because the falling doesn’t hurt as bad as a life stuck on the wrong side of the river.

It is common of people with near-death experiences to have these kinds of revelations. As my favorite theologian, Richard Rohr says, “It seems we only know what life is when we know what death is.” Death taught me that life isn’t something to be always chasing, but something to be in the flow of.

It feels so hard to stay in that flow these days when our world is fighting such a hard battle, but I believe so many of us are in our homes for a reason right now. We’re being invited to slow down, stop achieving, and find a new flow. We’re invited to join into the dance of life that was happening well before we arrived. Whether it means that now is the time to finally try something new, or the time to quiet down and listen to what your heart may be trying to tell you for the first time, it’s a ride we’re all on together. And I’m grateful for every day on it.