"With a voice reminiscent of early Faith Hill, and the sassiness of Kellie Pickler, Cook is making a name for herself in Music City."
-Indie Voice
Listen Up!
I fell in love with the song "Fall Apart" the very first time I heard it. It really resonated with me because it's so raw and emotional, but it also provides a glimmer of hope in the darkest of times. It lets you know that it's okay to not be okay sometimes, which I think is so important to hear these days. Sometimes you just need to let go, feel all your feelings, and have a good cry... only then can you start putting the pieces back together again.
About Corinne Cook
2021
Engaging in a whirlwind balancing act both personally and professionally, Corinne Cook has spent much of the past couple of years writing and gearing up to record tracks for her forthcoming album release due out in 2022. The first single from the latest slate of sessions comes the humorous, mood-lightening, fun co-write Blah Blah Blah about date night with a significant other.
While Corinne proudly called her second album, Dressed Up For Goodbye a “personal expression” whose songs “all reflected different parts of my life,” Her last album release, Yes I Can marked an important breakthrough for her as a songwriter of great storytelling skill and depth. She co-wrote two of the eight tracks with the project’s producer and engineer Denny Martin and songwriter Bart Ambrose. Corinne continues to develop her writing and plans on several co-writes for her future releases.
Corinne has enjoyed a handful of accolades for her previous albums. “I Don’t” from her critically acclaimed 2015 release Dressed Up For Goodbye won a Nashville Industry Music Award (NIMA) for Song of the Year in 2016. Songs from her albums have sold well digitally and continue to make great strides in streaming on Spotify, Pandora and numerous overseas radio outlets, earning her fans everywhere from Australia to the UK to the Philippines. Her debut album I’m Not Shy included two tracks that reached the Top 5 on the Inside Country chart – the #1 hit “Uninvited Guest” and the title track, which reached #4.
“I like to call my albums emotional rollercoasters, snapshots of life and how I feel about different things, with variety from track to track,” Corinne says. “With every song, I want people to feel what it represents."
The California native has been accumulating and telling stories all her life, all grounded in her years growing up in an intensely musical family in the Central California towns of Tracy and Escalon. She has fond memories of family jam sessions with her mom on guitar, step dad on bass and brother beating on the chairs (drums) while she sang. Overcoming her initial shyness about performing, she participated in choir from middle school through high school and was selected to sing several solos in high school performances. She later incorporated singing into her stint in the Air Force, which she joined after high school graduation at 17.
Corinne was in technical school for her job as a medical lab technician when the Gulf War began. During technical school at Keesler AFB in Mississippi, she was involved with a group of musicians and actors who performed “dinner shows” for other military members and their families. After technical school, she was stationed at Travis AFB during the time of the Gulf War. She returned home to Tracy after her military service, and a few years later, she won a singing competition at a bar in Riverbank, CA. The prize was supposed to be a pro recording contract, but instead the host of the contest, Leon Womack, became her manager. He funded a trip to Nashville to record songs that ultimately led to her first album I’m Not Shy.
Reconnecting with her passion for singing and performing, Corinne began singing at festivals in Northern California and worked part time as a radio DJ for the classic country station 93.9 “The Ranch” in Ripon, CA. As her radio persona “Ranch-Hand Jane,” she hosted karaoke for the station at various venues and presented legendary country artists like Charlie Daniels and Johnny Lee when they performed in town.
Fully committing to the dreams that are now coming to fruition, Corinne moved to Nashville, to focus on developing her career as a singer. She performed at more festivals and enjoyed radio play for her maiden voyage I’m Not Shy album.
Corinne began working on her second album, Dressed Up For Goodbye, several years after the release of I’m Not Shy while also developing her songwriting chops and performing in community theatre plays in Mt. Juliet. She began performing at songwriters’ nights in the Nashville area, gigging at such places as The Commodore and the Millennium Maxwell House. During this period, the singer also went back and finally finished her Bachelor’s Degree.
On the empowering, anthem-styled title track to her third album Yes I Can, Corinne Cook sings about four American icons whose triumphs deeply impacted the way our culture viewed women - Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Earhart and Sally Ride. The chorus resounds like a personal mission statement: “I’m that kind of girl. . .To those who say no you can’t, I say yes I can.”
The emerging indie country artist connects profoundly with the song because she, too, is an extraordinary woman who has broken through the limitations and expectations of what someone of her gender can do. On her way to pursuing her career and breaking through as a Nashville based singer, songwriter and performer, she served the Air Force during the Gulf War, raised two daughters and a son as a single mom, waitressed and worked graveyard shifts, even DJ’d for a country radio station.
“Whether I’m one of the songwriters or not, that’s a lot of life experience to draw from, and for me everything is driven by the opportunity to relay a message and convey the emotion behind it,” Corinne says. “I want to find and write songs that I care about so I can tell a meaningful story. Each of my albums represents a different point in time in my life, with special memories and dreams attached to them, and I love taking people on the journey with me, from the moment I wrote or first heard the song through the recording, mixing and mastering process. There’s a whole different dynamic happening because I’m putting my heart, and my art, on display in the hopes people are going to love it. I’m anxious and excited at the same time to hear what everyone thinks.”
