Shareck steps up, Celina Record

Sharek steps up to the mic for new release Lisa Ferguson, lferguson@starlocalmedia.com Jun 16, 2016 0 Sticks and stones may break bones, but Corey Sharek isn’t about to let names hurt him. “I’ve always been told I’m a know-it-all,” the Plano-bred singer-songwriter said. Rather than run from the teasing, Sharek embraced it, evidenced by the fact that he titled his album “Mr. KnowItAll.” He will perform cuts from the record, which dropped last month and is available for download on iTunes and Amazon.com, when he takes the stage today at the Celina Farmers Market Friday Nights on the Square event. Sharek, who lives in The Colony, said the title also nods to the fact that he played nearly all of the instruments featured on the record, which boasts what he calls an Americana sound. “I’ve always been just a student of music,” he said, having studied it formally and also learned to play by ear. “For the most part, I was very much in the mindset of absorbing the aura of it more than the technical aspects of it.” In the process, he found work as a “sideman,” playing bass guitar alongside numerous North Texas musicians. “My job is to support the song … but also kind of make it better, to add richness, to add character, texture, add additional music context,” he explained. Having the opportunity to do so while recording his own material “was very exciting,” Sharek said, “but it also made the record sound different than a traditional singer who goes into the studio and uses the house band because I got to control the mental process.” Sharek, who first picked up the guitar when he was a boy, got his start in the music business in the 1990s. “I was fortunate to play with a lot of very seasoned blues players when I was an early teenager,” he said. These days, he said, he is attempting to “carry on the tradition of musical storytelling.” Sharek describes “Mr. KnowItAll” as “a split-me-in-half-and-bear-my-soul kind of record,” peppered with lyrical tales inspired by people he’s known and adventures he has taken. The track “Alone Among Friends” is an homage to the late, influential Dallas singer-songwriter Jay Johnson, with whom Sharek said he was rekindling a friendship when Johnson took his own life last year. The song, Sharek said, “was my way of apologizing for past transgressions, and that’s what created the record. … I had this concept of, I’m getting to a point in my life where I want to create more of a musical legacy.” Sharek dedicated “Mr. KnowItAll” to Johnson for “allowing there to be a (local music) scene for the rest of us to swim in.” Another tune, “The Whiskey Burns,” portrays a scenario that listeners may find familiar. “It’s one of those songs that everybody’s been a part of,” he said. “Imagine a drone flying into your neighborhood bar and just being observant; a fly on the wall, if you will, at your local tavern.” While he has grown accustomed over the years to backing up other musicians, Sharek said he is equally comfortable taking center stage as a frontman. “Sometimes you want to be the passenger so you can see the sights, and sometimes you want to be behind the wheel so you can control the direction,” he said. “I’m going to keep my feet in both camps.”