When I first heard .357 Lover’s debut album Diorama of the Golden Lion, I wanted to do two things- first, figure out who was doing the epic-Freddie-Mercury-style vocals and second, meet him so he could teach me how to belt. Unfortunately, Corn Mo lives in New York, so being in LA, I had to settle for a phone call.
Corn Mo is an endearing singer/songwriter, keyboardist, and accordionist. He graciously talked to me about guns, Ben Folds, German ladies with candy, and trying to get laid…oh, and his album. I got so excited by his stories that I forgot to ask him how to belt properly. (Corn Mo, if you’re reading this, hit me up.)
Racket Kateri: Let me start off by saying that your album is wicked.
Corn Mo: Oh, you like it?
RK: I’ve been jammin’ to it in my car for the past few weeks.
CM: That’s really crazy. Thanks.
RK: So, “.357 Lover” -does that mean that you like weapons?
CM: Yes and no. I like watching weapons on TV. I got a trophy when I was a kid for marksmanship, but I never went hunting or anything—nothing like that. I shoot targets.
RK: You don’t own a .357 Magnum or anything?
CM: It was a .22. I don’t even know if that’s considered a real shotgun. It’s got bullets, but they’re really small…You can shoot somebody with that I think, and nothing will happen.
RK: What is the concept of Diorama of the Golden Lion?
CM: Well, I wrote a short story based on it. It was sort of like a fan fiction but more of a fantasy fiction of the band going to this netherworld full of these redneck elves, and Daniel Boone guides them through this fantastical forest. I never finished the story, so I made an album instead…I took a few tangents.
RK: Do you post on fan fiction websites?
CM: I have one that I started, but I haven’t really posted anything yet. It’s called BadFanFiction.com, and on CornMo.com (http://cornmo.com/), I have some fan fiction in the “Story” archive (http://cornmo.com/stories/). I’ve just started writing .357 Lover fan fiction, which has been really fun in addition to the Diorama story.
RK: What is the “Hava Nagila Monster”?
CM: That was from a movie called, Puberty: The Movie that I worked on, and I played the bar mitzvah entertainment. It’s about this kid that tries to get the hot girl in his class to come to his bar mitzvah so that all the kids will come to his bar mitzvah, and he’ll get money. He needs $3000 to buy a hooker. There’s a comedian named Eugene Mirman who hosts the bar mitzvah, and I’m the musical entertainment at the bar mitzvah. So they wanted me to rock up “Hava Nagila,” and I couldn’t figure out how to rock it up so I wrote the “Hava Nagila Monster.”
RK: How do you respond when people mistakenly think you’re Meatloaf?
CM: You know, I really like the songwriting of Jim Steinman, and I really like Meatloaf, but sometimes I get offended because I think they’re just saying it ‘cause I have long hair and I’m fat and I wear a blazer. But if they said, “You sound like Jim Steinman,” which some people have said, then I get really excited because then I know it’s about the songwriting and not about my weight problem. [.357 Lover] is working with the guy that wrote Hair, Jim Rado. In the past, we’ve worked, just me and him, and I think he’s in his late 70s. He’s done a lot of drugs over his life. He kept calling me Meatloaf and then apologizing for calling me Meatloaf. Now he does it, and thinks it’s funny, ‘cause he worked with Meatloaf on Hair and the sequel to Hair, and he gets me mistaken with him. He wanted me to put one of my songs in this sequel to Hair and he had his head down listening, and then before he lifted his head up he’s like, “Meatloaf, can we—uh…sorry, sorry, I’m really sorry.” I said, “Naw, it’s cool.”
RK: Tell me how you came about covering “Get Your Hands Off My Woman” by the Darkness, with Ben Folds.
CM: I met Ben Folds when I was at the airport in Nashville cause my folks were living up near Nashville, and he was on my flight on the way back to New York. I gave him a CD ‘cause I always keep one just in case. I wasn’t sure it was him at first, and I didn’t want to be one of those dumbasses and go “Hey, are you Ben Folds?” and they’ll be like “Who?” So, I looked at his bag, and it said “Ben Folds.” He told me later that he gets CDs all the time, but for some reason he decided to listen to that one. He liked it and he asked me to tour with him. Then we were both doing Bonnaroo back in 2006, I believe, and he asked if I wanted to do that Darkness cover with him. So we went to his studio, which is the old RCA studio that Chet Atkins built and Elvis and Johnny Cash used it, which was really cool. We knocked it out in an afternoon, and then we went to go eat. It was a lot of fun. He’s really generous.
RK: Both of you have the same type of voice and style. You guys should collaborate on an album.
CM: Who? Me and Ben Folds or me and The Darkness?
RK: You and Ben Folds.
CM: Oh, ‘cause I wanted to join The Darkness when Justin Hawkins quit, but that’s a pipe dream. That’ll never happen…But yeah, I’d like to do a Kid Rock song with Ben someday. I think that’s the next step in the progression of doing things that are borderline awesomely wrong. I’m a closet Kid Rock—well, now I’m an out-of-the-closet Kid Rock fan. All my friends know.
RK: Well, now all of the Racket Mag readers will know.
CM: Oh good. They should.
RK: Do you have any advice for the accordion-playing nerds that want to get laid?
CM: That want to get laid? Um…yeah. If a girl comes up to you after the show, and says, “Can you teach me how to play accordion?” she doesn’t really care. She’s just trying to break the ice. And if girls come up to you and say you don’t have to teach them accordion to make out with them, that’s a clue that they want to make out. Those are two things that happened that I didn’t figure out until I told my friends the story. And they’re like, “That’s two missed opportunities as an accordion player to get laid and you missed both.” So I’m not a good person to ask cause I always miss the opportunities, but I guess my advice would be…Be ready cause it’s gonna happen.
RK: I was listening to “Germany Lady Special.” What does that consist of?
CM: It’s two ladies. I lived in Germany when I was a kid, and I lived on a military base. There was a lady named The Donut Lady that would show up every day at four, and she had a station wagon. She’d show up in this parking lot between the apartments and open the back of her station wagon. She’d have candy and donuts and all the kids would run up and buy from her. So she’s one of them. There was another lady. We were on way back from Wiesbaden back to Frankfurt, and there was a big lady that needed a ride to Frankfurt. We had a Volkswagen van, so she sat in between me and my brother, and she opened up her bag when we started driving. She had some kind of gummy candy in her purse and gave me and my brother candy and we trusted her. Then we dropped her off at the roundabout near our housing area and that was it. She’s actually the German Lady Special. It was all good. There were no needles or razorblades.
RK: Do you wanna say any final words about the album?
CM: It took ten years to make…not from hard work, but from procrastination. I’m glad it’s done. I hope people enjoy it as much as I did making it…Is that retarded?
— Kateri Lirio