Corey Landis’ songs New Year and Shine were voted semi-finalists in the International Songwriting Competition, with New Year making it all the way to the finals. Being in the top 1.4 percent of 15,000 entrants gets Corey’s song heard and judged by one of his heroes, Tom Waits, as well as Legend Loretta Lynn (were Corey to look upon her, he’d be looking at Country!), Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse, Joss Stone, and others.

Corey recently signed with management firm Untapped Artists to help oversee his “floundering non-career” (his quote). A brand new coreylandis.com should be up shortly.

Corey’s currently plugging away on his next studio record, a stripped down, piano-based ’70s inspired throwback to the sound of the early recordings of Waits, Newman, Elton, etc., which will feature string arrangements by composer and member of the legendary Newman film-scoring dynasty, Joey Newman. In Warhol fashion, it’ll be mixed and co-produced by friend and kick-ass painter, Chapman Mogridge. It’ll be a long road to hoe, but Corey’s hopeful it’ll be his best work.

In the meanwhile he continues to write and record with the hopes of collecting some songs on a limited edition EP. These songs are a little more experimental, and feature no piano at all. They’ll be featured one at a time on MySpace (www.myspace.com/coreylandis) for preview and download before collected on the EP. All-the-while, Corey will be playing shows in Los Angeles and possibly elsewhere.