Oregon Music News

For eight years, Miles Kurosky was the principle songwriter and front man for the impish pop outfit known as Beulah. A group associated with the Elephant 6 Collective, Beulah grew in both ambition and fan base over the course of their career, managing to end it on a brilliant high note in 2003 with the release of what would be their last album Yoko.

Perhaps the most surprising part of the band’s break up was that the prolific Kurosky didn’t churn out a batch of new material soon thereafter. Even more surprising was the reason for this: The songwriter spent the last five years suffering from a severe shoulder injury as well as battling kidney problems, both of which kept him from being able to pick up a guitar until just recently.

With those ailments behind him (for the most part), Kurosky is ready to take a tentative step back on to the stage with the release of his first solo album The Desert Of Shallow Effects (out this week on Majordomo Records). The disc expands on the lovely pop of his former band, but lets more of the darkness that marked their work creep in at the edges. When the light gets let in, either through his charming harmonies or the delirious jangle of his guitar playing, it is bright, bold and warming.

Kurosky spoke with Oregon Music News from his new home in his new hometown of Portland, Oregon, about the medical trauma that kept him from playing music and how it affected his songwriting and his view of the world.

How did you end up moving to Portland?
My wife and I have lived in San Francisco for years partly because she’s from there. But after she graduated, we had kind of priced ourselves out of San Francisco. So we put together a list of cities and Portland was on it. It was actually the only place we visited–I mean, I had been through on tour a few times, but… we went through and were smitten with it. It’s changed a lot in the last 10 years. Some people would bemoan that change, but I think it’s pretty fantastic. It is one of the great cities but still manages that small town vibe.

Have you been able to get out and check out the Portland music scene at all?
I know of its existence. I’ve only been to one or maybe two shows since I’ve been in Portland. I have friends in bands but I don’t really go out and see shows too often. I’m more of a homebody really.

It has been a while since the last album that you made with Beulah and this solo record. Was it just your health problems that kept you from making music?
Mostly, yeah. Also when you deal with health issues, you deal with depression as well. It’s hard to stay positive mentally when you’re having difficulties with your body. I wasn’t trying to be slow. I wish, in hindsight, that I recorded this quickly after Beulah broke up.

What happened with your shoulder?
I had shoulder problems in the past. Basic stuff like tendonitis and bursitis. But all this started when Beulah was on tour in Sweden. The boys were doing soundcheck and I fell off the stage. I kind of jumped off the stage and my feet got caught in the wires. It was a pretty high stage and I fell and hit my elbow and head and funny bone, but I also felt my shoulder pop back out and in. An after that I started slowly losing use of my arm. I didn’t know what was wrong with it. I went to the doctor and he said it didn’t look like anything was wrong, but that they should get in and take a look. Exploratory surgery turned into 8 hours of surgery. It was a lot worse than we expected. The worst thing was a torn labrum and the tearing in all rotator cuffs. And then while it was healing, I couldn’t move my arm to a certain point without the tendons getting caught on the screw. So they had to go in and redo the surgery. That was another year of rehab.

And then you were developed kidney problems in the midst of this.
The kidney was diagnosed as being related to an intestinal disease. We’re still trying to work out what it is. Basically, I don’t absorb nutrients properly and develop chronic kidney stones. In fact, I can feel one right now not as bad as other ones I’ve had. That was the most excruciating pain. They drop from the kidney and are so big that they get stuck in your ureter. So, they have to send a tube up through the penis through the bladder and destroy them and pull them out. It’s a chronic condition. The worst sort of chronic condition you could have because with the intestinal disease there’s no cure. They’ve put me on a few different drugs, but you can’t really cure that. I’ve tried changing my diet, and started eating a lot differently, but it’s incredibly limiting. It’s especially hard because there’s so many good places to eat in Portland.

Did you have health insurance for all of this?
Luckily, I did. It was sort of serendipitous. I just sort said to myself a year before I am going to get myself insurance for the year. I had this weird feeling that maybe I should get personal insurance. It was expensive but it would have been a lot more had I not spent the $300 or something a month. Now, my wife has insurance so she can get me on her plan. It’s unfortunate and kind of ridiculous that more Americans aren’t for health care reform. We lead the world in bankruptcies due to medical expenses… it’s crazy.

Was it hard for you to not be able to play music as you were dealing with all of this?
Pop enough Vicodin and anything’s easy to forget. That’s true. You have to roll with it. It’s frustrating, certainly. You feel really overwhelmed and you feel impotent, but really just you have to deal with it. The body does what’s it going to do. It was difficult but I had no choice in the matter so I couldn’t really complain. And again when you’re in pain a lot, the only thing you care about is not being in pain.

With the songs on your new album, did you have some written before these problems came up or did they all come after? Or were you able get things done during it?
I’d say yes to all three–before during and after. I had some of the songs ready but I couldn’t practice until my shoulder got better. A couple of songs I wrote a cappella. I remember being in a car once singing a melody and that became “Apple For An Apple.” So I kept writing even when I couldn’t play guitar.

How did all of this affect your songwriting?
I think in part because of the troubles, I had a lot of time for self-evaluation. I started thinking about my life and who I’ve known and what I’ve done. I touched on the medical problems with the first song (“Notes From The Polish Underground”)–the opening line is “My limbs have failed me again”–and from there I told the story, a little bit, of my grandmother from Poland, in a two-minute pop song, trying to draw parallels to my own life. Trying to add up the sum of little bits of my life. It certainly was the case with ["Apple For An Apple"], where I’m asking myself, “What do I believe–the apple of science or the apple of religion? Newton or Eve?” It’s the stuff I had to consider when I was going through surgery. Am I going to trust the guy with the steady hand who’s taking care of me or the guy who is promising eternal salvation?

Do you feel like you lean towards one over the other?
I kind of have my toe in both pools.

You’re about to head out on tour. Are you nervous about getting on stage again?
Yes and no. I do have a lot of anxieties and neuroses about it. I’m worried that it goes well. Not just ticket sales but staying healthy. There’s lots of weird things you don’t know that might happen. It just seems really hard and difficult. Looking at the dates, it seems like a lot of work, I feel really unprepared. Today is the second day that I’m in San Francisco practicing with the band. There’s still so much work to do. Also I just bought my first home in Portland and I was enjoying just being in my home. I’ll certainly miss my family and my wife.

I read on your Facebook page that you were getting a lot of questions about whether you’ll be playing Beulah songs on this tour. Did you make a decision on that?
I definitely will. A lot of people have been asking for those songs and I understand why they’re requesting them. The band meant a lot to some people and younger people haven’t had a chance to hear those songs live. I don’t feel like it’s an unreasonable request. I did write those songs. I don’t have to be dragged by a wild horse to play a song that I hate. I’ll try to pull out a few of them. We haven’t even rehearsed them so likely it will be whichever ones are the easiest.

Do you think you’ll continue on playing music after this tour?
I take it as it comes. I may make music again, I may never make music. Being away from something that you love for a while really challenges you. It makes you wonder how important it is, if it defines you as a person. It’s what I did for a long time, and in a certain sense, I became robotic in my motions. I don’t know. I’ll have to see. I think I’ll have to be like Brett Favre. Go play the game and then hem and haw. A lot of it depends on the tour. We’ll see how it goes. I might have the time of my life and it might be a stunning failure. That’s the thing that’s fantastic about life, there’s a lot of different turns that life can take.

Do you know what you would do if you weren’t playing music?
Absolutely no idea. I have been writing a novel for the past five years. I had a time limit on that–as long as I finish by the time I’m 65 that would be fantastic. So if I stop playing music, I should try to get that done.

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Miles Kurosky plays at home in Portland on April 9th at the Doug Fir.