Lonnie Walker

Brian Corum knows something about taking the long road. 

The Louisville-born, North Carolina-raised vocalist and guitarist of Lonnie Walker started the project in 2006 while studying at East Carolina University, using just a kick drum and an acoustic guitar. After a time, the group expanded to include Eric Hill (guitarist), Raymond Finn (drummer), Josh Bridgers (bassist), and Justin Flythe (keyboards), moved to Raleigh one by one as various members finished their schooling, and released These Times Old Times in 2009 (and then re-released it a year later on a cassette-only label Corum helped start called Digg Up Tapes).

Blending the college rock stylings of bands like Pavement and the Long Winters with the ambitious americana of Crazy Horse and Corum’s howling voice and varied songwriting, the band gained a dedicated local following as it toured throughout the South over the next several years, sharing bills with bands such as Annuals (whose bassist, Mic Robinson, later joined the band) and Future Islands. 

But personally, Corum says, the next several years “were really rough for me,” as he fell into an opioid addiction, beginning with pills and then transitioning to heroin. In 2014,   Corum started taking methadone, a drug which minimizes the effects of heroin; sometimes, while on tour, he would find himself waking up at 5 a.m. to find a local methadone clinic and get right before his bandmates woke up. “It was a nightmare,” he reflects. “You had to plan your tour around where clinics were.”

The band digitally released its second album, Earth Canals, in 2015, which saw the band extend its range from affecting indie rock (“Teenage Poem”) and garage pop (“Baby Man”) to kaleidoscopic, theatrical rock and roll (“Earth Canals”). But the same year, Corum’s problem brought him to a point where he ended up at a homeless shelter in Raleigh, questioning whether he wanted to on as a musician at all. 

“I was very, very confused about the reason my life had gotten to this point,” Corum says. “I thought maybe I wouldn’t be able to do it because of playing bars...at the time I didn’t know.” 

“But I really can’t help it, I enjoy it,” Corum adds. He pauses, and then says again: “I really can’t help it.” 

Corum brought a guitar (“one of the only ones I didn’t sell,” he adds) with him to the homeless shelter while working his way through a program and slowly began writing songs again, with some even making it to Easy easy easy easy. And as he began to rebuild his life, Lonnie Walker eventually reformed, with a deliberate turn toward a more personal style of songwriting. Being the primary songwriter in the project helped, Corum says. “If I were on the other side, I would have fired me a long time ago,” he cracks.

After five years since their last album and more than a decade since These Times Old Times, the band is returning this year with a new set of songs titled Easy easy easy easy. After an initial round of recording that left them disappointed, the band went back to the drawing board and re-recorded everything live with Colin Swanson-White at the Raleigh-based Synaethestics Studios.

On its second iteration, the band used a Tascam 388 8-track recorder. “It suits this album particularly well,” Corum says. “It’s got a certain looseness to it, in a good way.”

The Earth Canals follow-up sees the band further develop its unique stamp on the Carolina music scene with songs like the roaring “Funny Feeling,” a howling portrayal of opiate withdrawal and what Corum refers to as “the mindset of a hypochondriac,” and “Busy, Bold Sounds,” a melodic, low-key track that slips quickly in between restraint and urgency, to “The Making of the Man,” a wiry rock opener that brings to mind fellow Southerners The Glands. 

And so in the lifetime of a decade it’s experienced since its first album, Lonnie Walker, much like the driving force behind the band, has taken the circuitous route to its new record. Corum has been clean for a year and a half, and the band is planning a short tour around the release. He describes “Funny Feeling” as a “barrage of feelings,” a description that could fit any number of songs on the new record. And considering the band’s trajectory, how could it not be?

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