American Band Rock: Wes Cunningham's 12 Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking

Before Jason Mraz began to hit the scene with his blend rock and rap-singing, there was Wes Cunningham. Cunningham’s album 12 Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking exemplifies that blending of multiple styles, and yet, it also shows that when it comes rights down to it, Cunningham is a singer-songwriter. Mraz would fall into this category, but that’s for another day. What I mean is that beneath all of the different styles, rhythms, and instrumentation, Cunningham is a guy with guitar and some poignant songs and stories to sing.

The styles on 12 Ways… range from the funk, rap-sing on “So It Goes” and “Say My Name” to the driven rockers (“America the Beautiful,” “Win Some Lose Some”). There are ballads (i.e.: “Magazines”) and a blend of Mexican guitar, horns, and syncopated rhythms on “Not Enough.” Top all this with “Car Wreck,” pure lounge lizard.

Yet, when Cunningham and band played an acoustic set for a KFOG TV special promoting this album, you found that the heart of these songs simply emerged more. It’s not like other unplugged versions where you wonder if the artist ever really envisioned the song this way. With Cunningham, underneath all of the ways he has put his songs together, you can still always imagine him at home, sitting on the couch, talking to himself through song.

For instance, “Gone” begins as an acoustic blues, almost drunken drawl, that changes into an electric screamer, but the singer-songwriter lyrics and voice always come out on the top. Cunningham fits into the American Band Rock section of the Spectrum which is a nod to how well the music is put together with each piece developing the sound. It is not Guitar Rock or Hard Rock, because the guitar never overpowers the lyrics, never takes over and thus drowning out the singer-songwriter at the heart of this music.

It is interesting to look for other singer-songwriters who may be surrounded by a band, may attempt various styles but never covers up the singer-songwriter behind the music. World Party comes to mind, Karl Wallinger’s band. Even though Wallinger has used an eclectic mix of styles (especially on Bang and Egyptology), using dance rhythms, electronics, keyboards, and sixties pop, you’ve still got a singer-songwriter on your hands who could also perform those songs at the local coffee house.

So Wes Cunningham, Jason Mraz, and Karl Wallinger are in the group I’d call: singer-songwriter-in-a-band.

This rap-sing which caught my ears in Cunningham, and now with Mraz, isn’t your 80’s rap, and this isn’t Eminem. It’s rap-sing, singing that becomes a chant, a way to get more words (and rhyme) into the structure of a rock song.
Discussions about the origins of rap often go back to Bob Dylan, and definitely “Subterranean Homesick Blues” has a rap-sing quality to it. This, of course, was emphasized by the video of Dylan holding placards of words and phrases, casting them aside as the song went along (done again by INXS for “Mediate” as homage but with much less words per second in the song). Much later is R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World (and I Feel Fine)” with Michael Stipe taking his turn at rap-sing.

For as much as Cunningham’s rap-sing and wide-ranging album create an altogether unique collection, this record at heart is about the lyrics. Cunningham’s topics revolve around love and relationship, often with tongue-in-cheek asides and rhythmic phrasing that make looking twice at our own dark hearts kind of fun. While exploring the emptiness of fame, money, fashion, and physical attraction, there’s also the playful admission of being blown away that a model wants you. That dichotomy is the struggle that we face, the struggle of our desires and conscience, the struggle of what I want to do and what I don’t want to let myself do as St. Paul said, the struggle of sinner and saint as Martin Luther said. Who knew that I could struggle to resist the devil inside as I rap-sing to some hard driven rock mixed with Mexican dance and some funk? Whoever said that rock music is devil music probably didn’t wait around to hear Wes Cunningham, but if they did, they might find him arguing with the devil while making some damn fine music!