“It’s a little homage to Mrs. Perry,” says Adrian Perry of his new project, El Cortina, and its namesake. Pulled from his wife’s maiden name and her nickname during college, “Cortina,” it was a word that “rattled around” in Perry’s brain for some time, until it found a place.
“It’s also a little bit of a throwback to some of my old friends who will remember that, and it’s a little nod to her,” adds Perry. “It’s kind of goofy. It’s a jokey nickname that just stuck in my head, and it’s a little confusing. It’s not grammatically correct, and the logo is an owl, but I think it all works.”
For Perry, El Cortina is his return to music, something he put on hold after his former band, alongside brother Tony, Dead Boots (formerly TAB the Band), went on hiatus in 2015 after nearly a decade together. Perry refocused on his family and his day job as an entertainment lawyer, then found himself tinkering around with writing again during the pandemic, eventually piecing together El Cortina’s debut, Top Down.
“I got some of the rust off,” said Perry about returning to music and reconnecting with collaborator and Top Down co-producer Eric Lense, who also contributes drums, guitar, and backing vocals, on the album. “Then we started recording,” he adds, “so it was a gradual process over a few years.”
Mixed by Zach Hancock (Alicia Keys, Gov’t Mule), Top Down marks a new musical chapter for Perry. It rides like a road trip back in time, from the 1970s and ’90s through the early ’00s and a time more distant with its bluesy attributes and garage-punk meddling, kicking off with the lo-fi drifter “Whiz Kid” and raw guitar rocker “Can’t Feel It.”
“This is some good ol’ power pop with a little scuzz on it,” Perry said of the latter track in a previous statement. “The character in the song is someone laboring through the addiction cycle, trying to make good and shine it on in normal life.”
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Perry fits in ballad, “Lesson No. 1,” before the bluesier heartland “Black Petunias” and punk-doused “I Love You, So?” and a riffed-up six-minute-plus closer “Gettalong.”
El Cortina is a departure in production for Perry, after bouncing song back and forth to completion with his brother in Dead Boots, to developing the entire vision and writing the songs for Top Down. The album merged from fragments of songs Perry had filed away and others that came more swiftly.
“They’re always rattling around,” says Perry. “It doesn’t mean I’m going to turn them all into something. If the song doesn’t come in a natural, progressive flow, then maybe it’s not meant to be. That’s one of the big things I’ve learned over the years when writing: never force anything and let the song tell you where it’s supposed to go.”
Midway into this progression, “Living E-Z” is Perry’s “Frankenstein” track since he began piecing together more than 20 years earlier, during his undergraduate studies at Stanford University.
“I wrote the beginnings of that song in college, but I could never finish it in the way that I wanted,” says Perry. “Then, it just came back to me, and I finished it in like three seconds. So that tune is actually a bit of a Frankenstein.”
Top Down covers a range of narratives, spanning escapism, individuality, and “standing tall in your uniqueness,” says Perry. “It’s also that feeling of wanting to get away from the same old cycles of life.”
These nuance stories show up in the sequence of Top Down, something that was intentional for Perry. “I wanted it to feel like those early ’70s records where you’ve got 40 minutes—that’s it,” he says. Clocking in at just under 41 minutes and 30 seconds, the album was also naturally sequenced for vinyl, closing side one with “I Keep Bleeding” then restarting side two on the fiery “The Stick-Up.”
For Perry, El Cortina opens a new door into music, one he’ll work on alongside his law practice. “It’s obviously not easy to slot in time for music—that’s part of the reason why it took so long to get this recorded,” shares Perry. “But I’m always much better when I have both sides of my brain churning, and having a music project, I realized I missed having that. I love my job [in law] as well. I get to work in music and entertainment and tech, and those industries are always evolving, so there’s a creative element there.”
Along with his father, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry, his grandfather, who played jazz, and cousins, Adrian comes from a long line of musicians, which prompted him early on to help protect artists’ rights and ultimately go into law.
“I remember as a little kid hearing stories or seeing my family getting screwed over in business, or not knowing what was going on,” shares Perry, a partner at Covington & Burlington in New York City. “And as a little kid, I thought we really needed a lawyer in the family. We need someone in on the inside who understands this stuff.”
Perry continues, “I just had this perception that musicians were getting taken advantage of, or at least didn’t know what was going on or didn’t have the whole story, so that was a big part of the motivation to go to law school. I wouldn’t call it a balanced life, but it is good to have the counterbalance. I’m very fortunate to be able to do two things I enjoy.”
Photos: Courtesy of Adrian Perry
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