About Me
BIOGRAPHYCurtis Evans was born 21 october, 1979 in Elgin, Illinois. He picked up a guitar and wrote his first song at age 15. He played in the rock group The Void from 1997 to 2000 with current members of acclaimed Chicago outfit, inchWORM. In 2004 he formed Our Friends Electric with proffesional online poker player Amos Lieberman and since 2006 has been performing throughout Chicago with various backing members. He is influenced first and foremost by The Beatles, later by Sparklehorse and Townes van Zandt. He enjoys long walks on the beach and dangerous amounts of alcohol and drugs.PRESSChicago Tribune Dec. 12th 2008
by Andy DowningThe songs on Curtis Evans' debut EP sound like holdovers from another time-often rumbling and creaking as though they're coated in rust or emanating from beneath thick layers of ancient moss. Indeed, it would not be surprising to hear that these recordings were discovered in some dust-caked lockbox in a long-forgotten attic corner rather than put to tape during an off-and-on, eight month process at Tim Sandusky's Studio Ballistico in 2006.
Evans, for his part, admits a fondness for homespun recordings that allow for the occasional mistake--a falling stool, a flubbed note, etc.--elements that make the music sound inherently human. "A good way to give life to a song is to record and not worry about the atmospheric sounds that are going on around you," says Evans, dismissing modern tools like Auto-Tune. "I want the listener to feel like they are engaging with something real. It's not doctored so that the heart is taken out of it."
It's a connection the Elgin native has been pursuing since he first heard the Beatles' "Across the Universe" while hanging out at a friend's house years ago. That same year he pushed his parents to buy him his first guitar- a cheap Yamaha acoustic model- and set about teaching himself to play. But unlike many of his peers, Evans was never content to bash out Nirvana or Green Day covers.
"It was just in me immediately that i wanted to learn to play the guitar to play my own songs," continues Evans. "I always wanted that feeling of creating something, and songwriting is the way i express myself best."
Evans played in a number of bands through high school, but it wasn't until he attended Columbia College to study fiction writing that he had his first breakthrough as a songwriter. Urged by professors to journal constantly, Evans began carrying a small notebook with him everywhere he went. "I've got many journal entries and poems I've written about people i run into on the bus or train," says the 29-year old. "That's the best occasion to journal because you're in a situation where you can't do anything but study people."
These character studies give life to the heartbroken individuals that populate "More Songs about Loneliness" (Grape Juice), including the suicide victim who "smiles back at God" as she leaps from a window ledge in "On the Occasion of Losing You." "They say there are two types of writers: Those who write about the inside world and those who write about the outside world," surmises Evans. "I guess I've always been drawn to that more personal conflict."Chicago Reader Dec. 18th, 2008
by Monica KendrickA 29-year-old Elgin native, singer-guitarist Curtis Evans is disreputable looking and frighteningly talented, with a melodious country-soul voice that sometimes gets sloppy, thick, and heavy—like if Hank Williams had tried a little of what Nick Cave’s been drinking. On his latest release, the EP More Songs About Loneliness (Grape Juice Records), he brings more heartbreak to the table—a rickety bar table, carved with lovers’ initials—than a normal unmedicated person can handle. While the EP is a study in the many ways to be downtrodden, maudlin, and lovelorn, onstage Evans sometimes adds a more sinister note to his persona, gesticulating and carrying on like a dissolute and heretical preacher—and the fuzzy conflagration of psychedelic guitar on “There Is a Devil†proves he knows a thing or two about hellfire. Inchworm and Umbra & the Vulcan Siege open. —Monica Kendrick
