Kurtis Eugene is a hard artist to pin down. His “debut” album Old Rooms, New Light straddles a line between traditional folk and modern esoteric waltzes. Simultaneously intimate and grand, it feels like chamber music that’s been written for your grandfather’s guitar. It hovers just this side of magic, but to get there it was seemingly necessary that Eugene explore something even more otherworldly. Before Old Rooms, New Light could be manifested there was November, Eugene’s 2013 six-song EP that, for five years, dwelt in musical purgatory.
Eugene, in particular, is a particular artist. Rather than producing an album a year with a half dozen singles and videos in between, he is more likely to methodically and agonizingly construct his albums.
Even after Eugene had November in a completed state, its public appearance did not last long. By the time Old Rooms, New Light was released, November had been shelved and barely heard of, let alone heard. The album, and any other Kurtis Eugene releases, had been pulled from the internet.
It wasn’t until now that Eugene decided to revisit, and re-master, the old material.
“Two years after releasing Old Rooms New Light, and having taken all the other Kurtis Eugene albums off the internet I revisited November, which was written in 2012 through smoke and psychosis,” explains Eugene.
“The album November was an honest try at capturing some quiet. Like the sea foam that’s stuck in the dark part in the back of the head. I bought six packs of Camels and a jar of cheap whisky, stuffed the ’99 with every instrument I own and drove the speed limit from Fredericton, New Brunswick to a steep hill near Pictou, Nova Scotia. Someone had put a log cabin 40 acres deep, and the town ran power to it with a few poles and some wire. I had just enough electricity to make a record, my cat George to keep me company, and a few ideas.
“It made me appreciate all the great and supportive people around me now, which is what I was missing in the middle of the woods. I could call 2012 the year in the middle of the bush, which is a great place to be, if you could just clear some of that salt-green sea foam from the dark part in the back of your head.”
Eugene had inevitably captured something, but perhaps not exactly what he felt he should be thrust into the spotlight with.
But an artist is ever-evolving and to produce the same album twice is both a feat in redundancy and impossibility. Life moves on. Rather than than letting November stew in obscurity, Eugene felt that re-releasing the album would allow for a sense of completion and closure before producing new material. At the very least, he felt there was a purpose in the material that was lacking in modern music.
“These days, artists are under a lot of pressure to constantly release new material, musical or otherwise. That’s why I’m taking my time to release a new album, why I felt it was right to revisit this older material first,” says Eugene.
“November has a lot of B-Sides—songs that didn’t make the album, but we don’t need B-Sides in today’s culture. What we need is honesty and passion and ownership in music and you can’t cheat time to achieve this. We need unironic folk music, honest country songs, fast and loud rock tunes that don’t make ‘being on the radio’ their bottom line. We need deep-rooted revival.”
And it’s clear that sentiment is exactly what Kurtis Eugene embodies in his music. His songs tend to be captured as an earnest wail—half croon, half gut-broiling cry. If there’s anything that comes across, it’s sincerity.
“There is a lot of music that needs to be released again with intention. Intention isn’t 99 cents, it’s a lifetime of growth though song, humility in great ideas, being proud of art, authenticity in G major chords played for 8 solid minutes. November was remastered with new perspective, and I hope it can mean something new to the people who knew me then. These days when I find myself in thick trees I can look up, or close my eyes, or fall asleep.”
November may be a dip back into a more abstract realm, but, as always when it comes to Kurtis Eugene‘s music, there’s a heart beating away at the core of it. The decision for a remaster and re-release is both an expression of acceptance and growth, and soon enough we’ll find out if it’s an indicator of the direction Eugene is headed in.