Reno songwriter and videographer Ford Corl is currently running an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds to release his new album, Welcome To The Blue Light Morning, the follow-up to his very enjoyable 2010 album Green Eyes. For more information, visit fordcorl.bandcamp.com and www.indiegogo.com/projects/ford-corl-s-new-album.
Tell me about the new album.
This one is expanding on the ideas that I was cracking with Green Eyes. It’s going down the rabbit hole with those ideas. They’re getting weirder. The songs are getting way more melded and psychedelic, maybe less traditional, not as structured. I’m kind of letting sounds and sound effects and loud guitars scream and smash into one another. I’m thinking about a lot more emotional things this time. I was having a lot of fun with Green Eyes. My idea was more focused on the music with Green Eyes. This is mostly focused on expanding on what I did with the music, but also throwing in a lot of themes that are cryptically really personal to me. … I’ve had a lot of family issues, sort of battled depression, had a lot of those human moments when you kind of step back and wonder what the hell you even are. I don’t know how relatable that is or not. It’s just kind of a weird three years. Everything post-Green Eyes. This album took three years to make, and everything’s been this kind of rollercoaster, and it’s obviously going to affect the music that I’m making.
The one song I’ve heard, “Worth the Wait,” is neat. What can you tell me about that song?
That song is a rare currently-in-love song. A lot of the songs I wrote are usually about me getting burned by love or love kind of leaving me in this weird place, chewing me up and spitting me out. This is actually a love song current to what I was going through at the time. I was very passionately in love. My idea was to write a love song that didn’t come across as a really happy I-love-you, you’re-the-apple-of-my-eye kind of song.
So, it’s in a minor key.
Yes! What I really wanted to express is how intense that emotion can be, and how intense I really felt. Especially toward the end of that song when it’s really just kind of swirling and there are a lot of loud notes just flying out. That’s the kind of love song I wanted to write—my emotions just flying out of me. That to me is the best love song I could’ve written for [girlfriend] Sage. … The song’s actually called “Worth the Wait” because she moved off to Denmark to play volleyball for nine months right when we got together. So it was me expressing that my intense feeling toward her is why I think it was worth staying together in that time. Normally, you get together with someone and they move away for nine months, it’s really hard to try to figure out how to make that work. But it’s me expressing to her that you’re worth the wait.
Are you still working for Channel 4?
No, I left News 4 for a production company called FLF Films. And I worked there for about six months. But now I work for a company called Healing HealthCare Systems, and I’m a nature videographer for them. They create a 24-hour environmental relaxation channel for hospitals. Me and my partner, Ryan Loetscher, are the nature videographers, so we travel all around the country and shoot all the national parks and forests and stuff like that. … Coming from two really stressful industries, the production company industry and the live television industry, it’s pretty much my dream job. … Not only is the company really great to work for and everyone’s really kind and thoughtful, but I get to travel to remote locations, some of the most beautiful locations in the country, and just kind of capture it and bring it back home. … They’re a company in town that services close to 800 hospitals around the country. The feedback that this company gets is unreal. They get tons of feedback like, “I wanted to give up and I wanted to die in the hospital but watching your channel made me want to live again.” So I’m working for this company that’s really progressive, and we really feel like we’re helping people. And it’s a dream job.