There’s a moment every roots artist faces when the music asks something deeper of them — when the guitar, the lyric, and the lineage all converge in a way that demands honesty over artifice. On The Sun Sessions, Cory M. Coons steps into that moment at one of the most storied addresses in American music: Sun Studio, Memphis, Tennessee. And he doesn’t just pay tribute — he rises to the room.
Coons has long walked a line between Americana storyteller and melodic craftsman, but this four-song EP draws him closer than ever to the source. Recorded live off the floor with vintage microphones and reel-to-reel tape, the project is steeped in the same unvarnished authenticity that defined Sun for the likes of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins. Coons isn’t trying to join their ranks. What he does instead is more interesting: he lets the studio’s spirit sharpen his own.
Take “Crumbs ’24.” Twenty years after its first release, Coons strips the song back to how it was born — voice and guitar, nothing more. The performance is plainspoken and vulnerable, the way great country and Americana songs should be. You can hear the floorboards, the air, the tension in the strings. It’s a reminder of a truth this industry sometimes forgets: the story matters more than the sheen.
The EP’s new single, “Memphis Whiskey Blues,” is where Coons loosens his shoulders and lets the Southern grit seep in. The track is a slow-burning, back-porch blues tune with a melody that ambles and a lyric that hits like good bourbon. “I’m just sittin’ by the tracks, sippin’ sweet sour mash…” he sings, leaning into the timeless imagery without parody or pretense. The blues is a difficult well to draw from without slipping into imitation, but Coons handles it with unforced ease — a traveler passing through Memphis, absorbing its cadence but still writing in his own hand.
“Faded Glory (Land of the Free)” carries a quieter resolve, reflecting on the ideals and fractures of a country still wrestling with its promises. Coons approaches the subject not with judgment, but with yearning — the same yearning that fueled the best singer–songwriters of the 1970s who understood patriotism as reflection, not rhetoric.
He closes with a spirited “Hound Dog/Don’t Be Cruel” medley — not an attempt to recreate Elvis, but a warm nod to the studio walls that once shook under his feet.With The Sun Sessions, Cory M. Coons doesn’t chase ghosts. He collaborates with them. And in the process, he delivers his most grounded, resonant work to date — a testament to what happens when an artist steps into history with humility and walks out with clarity.