We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Zach Cornell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Zach, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I had always played the guitar and sang a little. I’m talking cowboy chords and singing at church, not much more. When I was in college in Wichita Falls, Texas, I started getting into songwriting and playing around town in local dives. It still wasn’t much more than a hobby at that point. I loved playing and singing, but it was just a pastime. In my mind, I had to get through school, get a job, and start a family. Well, I graduated with a marketing degree and took the first sales job I could find. I hated every second of it. I wasn’t two weeks into the job when my girlfriend (now wife) saw how miserable I was and talked me into quitting. We had passively talked about my music, and she brought up the idea of moving to Nashville and trying to do it full-time. Looking back, it seems obvious that everything was pointing towards a career in music. I never had a solid career path in my mind, and the only truly good memories from my Wichita Falls years involved a guitar and a song. It makes sense now, but back then it felt like such a taboo idea. I had in mind that you have to be selling out arenas to make a living with a guitar, and I was nowhere near that good. But she gave me a little tough love and told me I needed to either get after it with music or hang that up and figure something else out. And I decided she was right and it was time to give it a real shot. So really, I just needed my wife to connect the dots that were right in front of me and push me over the edge, and here we are now. I guess I haven’t known for that long that I wanted to do this, but I’ve never been more sure of anything.
Zach, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’m a songwriter and country music artist from Clarendon, Texas. I got into this business because I fell in love with writing songs and singing right about the same time that I realized I hated every job I ever worked. And I found a good woman that encouraged me to put everything else aside and try it full-time. I’ve always been a little bit of a traditionalist when it comes to music, with most of my favorite artists having peaked in the 90s or earlier. I think that comes through in my songs, which are about as traditional country as you can find this day and age. I have nothing against the music that gets played on country radio today, but I am far from a proponent of it. And I think there’s a big group of folks who prefer my kind of country to the radio’s kind of country, but it’s still a little hard to find if you don’t know where to look. I want to make music that makes people like me excited to listen to country again. I make genuine, unapologetic country music. No bells and whistles, just steel guitars and fiddles and stories that hit close to home. I’ve become more and more passionate about this as I get older and hear less of the music I grew up on, and it definitely shows in this batch of songs I’ve been working on this year.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I’ve had people reach out to tell me that my lyrics helped them get through a tough time. Or that my song was just the kickstart they needed to get through a long day. Those things mean more to me than anything when it comes to music. Music is powerful, and I know I couldn’t count the number of times a song has got me through a hardship. And the idea that my songs can do for someone else what certain songs have done for me is just bonkers to think about. I don’t feel like I deserve that kind of influence, and it catches me off guard every time. It’s an incredible feeling when a person I’ve never met has related, especially on that level, to a bunch of words and chords that I made up on my couch one night. Nothing beats it.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
I think it’s really hard for most people to understand why we write. It’s easy to explain why we perform, everyone loves for people to like them or be impressed by them. But the songwriting thing can throw people for a loop. I know it sounds cliche and a little cheesy, but we really do it because we have to. I wrote my first song after a breakup with a girl that I really thought was something at the time. I didn’t write it because I wanted to, it was like I had to. The song made me write it, in a sense. And if we don’t write these songs, we start to go crazy. If I have a song idea that just needs to be written, it will eat at me and eat at me until I can sit down and write it. I think it’s really difficult to understand that from a non-creative perspective. When I spent 10 hours at a co-write once, my wife was infuriated, of course. But after she cooled down a little, she asked why we didn’t just set it down and finish it another day. We couldn’t! And out of the three guys in the room, not one of us ever suggested that idea. We were on the same page – this song needs to be written and we have to finish it or we will lose our dang minds. It’s hard to explain without sounding like I’ve already lost my mind, but it really comes down to the power of music. I think in the back of every songwriters mind is the idea that maybe their words can help someone get through something. With that kind of mentality, how could we not write?
Contact Info:
- Website: zachcornell.me
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zachcornellmusic/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zachcornellmusic
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9fuOwVIKE1scpbRP9-sDZg
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6WGNdWo7wBqMOuFKsKmRkJ?si=Ovbgw2E6Reii5O-SNJK_9A&dl_branch=1&nd=1 https://music.apple.com/us/artist/zach-cornell/1403062345
Image Credits
Eric Ahlgrim Kirsten Balani Liberty Cornell