An Interview with Beulah's Miles Kurosky, Tonight's Tractor Headliner
Photo Credit: Brandon Showers
Following the dissolution of the much-beloved purveyors of indie trumpet rock, his well-documented kidney problems and complications around shoulder surgery left him laid up in bed off and on for the past six years. He’s since recovered, fallen in love, gotten married, converted to Buddhism, moved up to the Pacific Northwest and recorded a beautifully rich, complex and deeply personal solo album.
In advance of his show tonight at the Tractor, we were able to spend some time chatting with Miles about the success and struggles of his life since Beulah, the current state of this country’s civility and of course, his new, highly-anticipated album The Desert of Shallow Effects.
Recently, we had a conversation with composer Dustin O’Halloran and in our exchange we talked a bit about how geographical factors can have such a strong influence on what actually ends up on a record. Did any of your disdain for L.A. life, and the noted lack of common courtesy, end up on your new record?
It’s there a little bit. The title itself comes from a quote from Frank Lloyd Wright who called L.A. “the desert of shallow effects.” I was basically reading a lot of books, a lot of anti-Los Angeles books and finding a lot of great quotes about it. When I found that quote I was thinking, how perfect is that, also given the time for self reflection from Beulah to now. “The desert of shallow effects” really captures how we live most of our lives in not worthwhile manners.
I converted to Buddhism in 2008. My wife’s Buddhist and we were married in a Buddhist temple. And her uncle who does Buddhist ministry actually married us, so I really married into this religion. I’ve started looking at things and when I was writing lyrics, I was thinking about what is my life: what has it meant, where is it going; just trying to make sense of some of the things that have happened.
And I thought, “wow, that’s kind of interesting” as Buddhists believe all of our lives are really deserts of shallow effects. We’re surrounded by all of these shallow effects. It’s about separating the spiritual from the physical. Too many people in Los Angeles put too much emphasis on material items and you lose connection with other things like your place in the world. What you’re supposed to do and what’s morally correct. In some senses, LA really helped me out. It helped me reflect. I might not have reflected as much in a nicer, quieter, saner place.
It sounds like it really pushed you to the extreme. A lot of people really believe that in order for someone to make a change in their life, no matter how big or small, you really have to be put in this uncomfortable situation. It sounds like L.A. might have been that situation for you.
That’s sort of what Buddhism’s about. It’s not about playing hacky sack, smoking weed and playing bongos in a circle. Basically, you attain enlightenment through suffering. Obviously, I didn’t attain enlightenment or become a Buddha or anything like that. But I attained a certain amount of knowledge from the pain that was Los Angeles.
And it was a struggle. I would literally get in fights with people in a line at the bank. People would cut in line or something. Just the weirdest things. And I’d just be in disbelief. And I would say something and it would just escalate. My mom raised me with manners and when other people don’t act a certain way, I just get worked up.
It’s a bit like the old social science predicament that you can’t necessary determine causal relationships rather than just correlational ones; but do you find that your day to day life is less confrontational in Portland?
Without a doubt. It’s not completely without [confrontations]. But overall, people in Portland are insanely nice. As am I; I might have a reputation of being otherwise but I’m not, it’s just when I’ve gone of the deep end.
Well…I’ll give you an example. The other day I was at this little sandwich place in Portland that’s doing really well, kind of like your place up there, Salumi. They don’t cure meats but the lines always out the door and there’s limited seating. There were these girls behind me. We were about 15 people deep already in the line, so they’re number 16 and 17. These girls come up and they’re like “Oh, I see a seat, I’m going to go grab it” and they go over and put their bags down. So we move up a couple in the line and we’re still about eight back and there are all these people standing with sandwiches in the their hands with nowhere to sit.
So I turn around to the girls and say “hey,” super nicely, “you might want to move your bags as you can see these folks over there they’re standing here with sandwiches and they need to have somewhere to eat, you know. And it makes no sense, if we all grabbed chairs, no one would have anywhere to eat.”
And they just stared at me and were looking like “yeah, so what.” So I went, “well, it’s rude. It’s just rude behavior. You should think about others and you know, you might be karmically rewarded if you actually think of other folks.” And she goes “yeah, I get it.” And then that’s what set me off and I said, well, actually I went crazy and said, “no, you doing F-ing get it. Get your MotherF-ing bags and put them off to the side and actually be a nice person to these people.” See that’s what happens, that’s how it goes. But a couple of other people in line backed me up and said “That’s right, that’s not how things work here.” But, yeah, overall, I am doing better. I hate confrontations, so Portland’s good for me.
Totally agree. We get really upset when people are just flagrantly disrespectful also.
We’re soldiers of politeness.
Well, not to continue along the path of talking about uncomfortable situations but hearing that story made me about a few scenes from [the Beulah-documentary] “A Good Band is Easy to Kill.” We couldn’t helping thinking back to that heated scene between you and Bill [Swan].
Oh yeah, when I slapped him. Incredibly wrong on my part and here’s the part they don’t show you. Bill and I have known each other now for 15, 16 years. Bill was actually just here the other night. But what people don’t see is that literally 15 minutes after that happened, we parked the van and I was profusely apologetic. And he was too, saying “I shouldn’t have pushed your buttons.” And we hugged and made up. We’re like siblings.
But editing of the documentary actually didn’t show that part but instead skipped ahead to Bill looking really somber while he was tuning a guitar that was actually a few days after that. I adore all the guys in the band. I adore them all. The movie didn’t show the part when we made up but I shouldn’t have slapped him. That was wrong.
Other than that, well, it sounds like, even with that, were you happen with how the documentary turned out?
Yeah. In a certain sense. It definitely did play to the whole “band that coulda, shoulda” sort of thing. Which in my respect, we actually did pretty well as band. We stayed at good hotels, and it didn’t show that, and we made good money, and most of the places we played were packed.
It sort of strengthened the myth that we were the “band that could have made it.” The poster boys for the unsung heroes. The modern Big Star sort of thing. But as you know with rock and roll, writing about it and observing it, the myths are almost better than the actual truth.
What should people expect the reality to look like when they come to see you at the Tractor?
I just hope we play tight. We just have five guys and they’re all practicing now. Actually, you can probably here them in the background working on harmonies. It’s really difficult. These songs are proving hard to get your head wrapped around. They’re way more complicated than Beulah songs. I did a lot of chord changes, a lot of key changes and just a lot of weird things. I was just trying to push myself.
But it’s funny. Just yesterday we tried “Emma Blowgun[‘s Last Stand]” and that was a breeze. Just three chords. Fantastic little song but just so easy to play. And then we did “Popular Mechanics [For Lovers}” and that was easy too. And we were like, why can’t we do this with the new songs and we looked at the chords and it’s like “Oh, that’s why.” [laughs]
I’m always trying to outdo myself and try to make something different. That last thing I want to do is take any steps backward. I should have made the normal shitty solo record that most guys do when they leave a band. Just an acoustic record sort of thing. [laughs]
Well congrats on getting the record out. From what we’ve seen, it’s been getting a lot of great press.
Thanks. Yeah, some people have had problems with certain parts of it. I think they just want me to make a Beulah record and that’s not what’s going to happen. But in the same way, I would expect people to be excited that I didn’t do a crappy-ass solo record.
And we have to be honest, if Beulah was still together, this would still be the record. It’s not like it’s really any different or I wrote the songs differently. Of course, there may have been different parts that Bill would have played, maybe different trumpet lines, keyboard parts or whatever. But the songs, the melodies and the chords would have all been the same.
And another thing, all the Beulahs have the record and they all love it. And that really means more to me than anything else in the world.
Last question. Likely a predictable one. With your fellow Portland resident Stephen Malkmus getting his old band [Pavement] back together, what are the chances of another Beulah tour and/or record?
Absolutely zero. Will never happen. God bless Steve and everything but yeah, I don’t really like reunions. I’ve seen a few of those tours like Television and Dinosaur Jr but I don’t know. They just don’t seem to have that something they had the first go around.
I don’t know, I saw Dinosaur [Jr] when I was still a kid, in 1988 or something, and I like things to just be what is and go away.
But I will say, and you’ll be the first to know that we did a live session recently for a thing called The Bay Bridged. Deerhoof’s on it, Thao Nguyen, Port O’Brien and a bunch of other people. I needed a backing band and Eli, who was also in Beulah, was doing the engineering session and said he’d bring in some session musicians. And I just showed up and low and behold, the backing band was Beulah. It was just great to see them because I love them and there was just this charm to it.
Miles Kurosky w/ Black Whales, Pancho San// 9:30, April 10, Tractor Tavern// Tickets $12
