Cork’s Jake Harper Breaks Down Band’s Origins and New Single ‘Rabbit’

By Grace Forrester

Self-described as “Weird rock, with some pretty parts, like pyrite”; DFW natives Cork are releasing their first official single ‘Rabbit’ on April 11th. With the song being in the works as early as last fall, ‘Rabbit’ brings together a driving instrumental under a beautiful spoken word poem combined with heavy-hitting vocals. DollpartzBlog had the pleasure of sitting down with one of the founding members Jake Harper to talk about Cork’s origins, the importance of creating the single and its’ respective EP, and much more.

So Jake, how about you give us an overview of how Cork came to be to those that are new?

Going from working within a group to working by myself and continuing the act of working by myself was just not as fulfilling as I had remember it being because I didnt like relying on myself entirely for all contributions. It felt like music, just like filmmaking, should be something that is done communally and features contributions of everybody that touches it, I think it's very unique and beautiful in that way.

I was thinking about it awhile ago that we have an inherent need and desire to contribute to the world we inhabit in a lot of ways, and when you’re an artist in any medium you think about if what you do has any importance to it. There’s people that are doing things life saving surgeries, keeping our power running, driving ambulances, and fighting fires and it makes you feel like “Whats the importance of doing this?” When you make something that you yourself feel impacted by and you know is strong, there’s almost a dutiful sense to put that out into the world and present that to people just in case it touches someone else that same way.

I think that’s very true, like sure we need these important jobs to keep society and ourselves going, but also creating and sharing art is just as nessacery since art has been at the core of the human experience since the beginning of time essentially? 

Yeah, I agree! The thing about that, when you get multiple people involved in the process of creating, I think broadens that idea a little bit more and makes it so that everybody loses their own individual identity in pursuit of the greater creation. Thats the whole point why we’ve put a lot more into the live performances now and presenting our music not with our faces and image individually, we're trying to escape ourselves a little bit and just focus purely on the music.

Alongside that, we wanted to change the lineup of the band for each album or every couple of albums until we felt like we reached a peak with that sound so that way we can keep our finger on the pulse of new music without getting in the rut because at least for me, you fall into the same playing patterns and a lot of the same habits, but you really get brought out into a new space and universe almost when you play with other people. Like, somebody will play something and you'll want to bounce off of that and you start letting go of some of your innate playing styles that you're used to.

Like you're constantly being challenged, but in a good and healthy way?

Right, exactly! To constantly change the lineup, I think that its a radical approach to that idea. So that’s how i’d describe an overview of Cork, a band with a rotating lineup so that we can stay constantly fresh and reinvented and do away with the idea of image by only looking at the music itself.

That’s very interesting! Going back to what you were saying about the difference between working with yourself versus working with a group, what did you do different with ‘Rabbit’ and the rest of the EP that you haven't explored in your solo music?

With doing your own music, you really have to rely on yourself to take ideas from one step to the next, the whole progression of the song, album, or idea is based on your own thoughts and you have to be more disciplined because you could get lost in the well of ideas and the thinking that you have to pick one and move on from there and build off of that. Using groupwriting with the ‘Rabbit’ lineup per say, Phoebe [vocalist] brought some original songs to the table. A lot of the songs I was writing were barebones in some ways, but [as an example] I had this idea for the riff to be moving up on on a drop d and a pattern and to slid back-and-forth and so Jackson [bassist] took that and asked ”What if I stopped the song here to compliment a snare hit?” I was like, “Oh that sounds cool!” I told him “Well what if I just let the guitar float along, almost like a droning, high-gain, warbling sound?” In that way, it was leaving a lot of room for other ideas and inspirations while letting songs breathe than the confined nature of writing songs by myself and approaching it that way. 

The lyrics for ‘Rabbit’ came entirely from a poem that Phoebe wrote inspired by the book Bunny by Mona Awad. She showed it to me and at that time we hadn't had lyrics yet for this intrustmenal and I thought “Why don’t we just do this spoken-word concept?” This was also the first song that Nick [french horn] joined us on. I had given him some ideas for a horn part to ride on that, then he would come in on these quarter note sections and do his own riffs which would accent the way I was playing. It was a lot of pulling things out from thin air and letting the song grow naturally rather than trying to be hyper-specific on certain ideas. With that, I think it’s been a more comfortable and eye-opening expereince. 

How did you and the rest of Cork know that ‘Rabbit’ was going to be the first single to release?

We had all talked about how we wanted to present everything because early on when we were recording, about two or three songs in, Jackson had pointed out that we were doing a mellow-sounding song, then we’d go into a more harsh and aggressive sounding one, and then we’d go back and forth. We thought “Well, if we were releasing singles, maybe we should keep that style.” I was thinking ‘Rabbit’, to me, was our best song, so it would be the most natural in my mind to present to everybody as being a statement of how we sounded and what we were about, then let everything else follow suit. It’s a sort of microcosm of everything we like to do within that lineup and a great encapsulation in general.

I’ve got one last question fro you! What can we expect to see in regards to the rest of the EP? Is there a date nailed down yet?

Kind of! As soon as I can afford to get it all mixed and mastered. We have this throughline of the ambient guitar and sort of “dreamy” sounds throughout the whole thing so ‘Rabbit’ is a good starter because it starts off just so hard and heavy, but then we have these very high ambient parts. We have one or two other songs that are heavy like that too. We figured out the sequence we want to go with for everything, I wouldn’t called it quite “dream-pop”, but it is kinda dreamy. Then, it’ll ultimately move more into acoustic and folk territory, but mixed with those previous ambient parts. I guess itll go from electric to acoustic in a lot of ways, which I find really cool!

Taking into account of Phoebe's solo music being partial to acoustic and folk influences, and me coming from a heavier background, I think everything that we’ve put together touches on all of our tastes really well. We feel happy to present something that’s simultaneously hard-hitting and also dreamy and relaxing. Everything should be out by the time summer rolls around because I don’t want to hold onto it for too long. I just want to put it out to let people enjoy it, let it exist as a record of our time together as a group of friends more than anything! Then i’ll let it leave my mind and body to move on to the next sound with the new lineup.

You can support Cork by streaming ‘Rabbit’ when it releases April 11th, along with following their official instagram for more updates!