Lonnie Walker - Easy Easy Easy Easy (2024)

As a kid, Brian Corum enjoyed exploring the basement at his grandparents’ house to see what kind of trouble he could find. Most of the time it would be things like trash bags full of trash bags or decades old sodas and snacks. But occasionally, he would stumble upon the rare treasures he knew weren’t meant to be seen. Something adult and perverted, guns, hidden money, things that seemed nefarious. Recalling that feeling of lurking in those clandestine corners, “Basement of Love” is about self sabotage through paranoia. Anxious, plaintive lyrics set against crunchy, strummy, almost-sunny electric guitars underscore the fear of rejection coupled with a fear of being accepted and loved. Taking it out on the invisible stranger, the “just my friend” friend. Seeing shadows in every corner because it’s easier to run sometimes. At least in the short term.

Corum formed North Carolina indie rock band Lonnie Walker in 2006 while he was still a student at East Carolina University. After filling out the rest of the lineup with guitarist Eric Hill, drummer Raymond Finn, keyboardist Justin Flythe, and bassist Josh Bridgers, the band released its debut These Times Old Times in 2010.

Lonnie Walker toured steadily throughout the South, with bassist Mic Robinson joining in 2014 prior to the release of follow-up Earth Canals in 2015. That year, however, Corum — the group’s primary songwriter, in addition to its vocalist and rhythm guitarist — was swept up in the opioid epidemic, beginning with pills and then transitioning to heroin. Eventually, he ended up at a homeless shelter in Raleigh, questioning whether he wanted to go on as a musician at all.

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 eventually, the band returned in 2017.

The Earth Canals follow-up sees the band further develop its unique stamp on the Carolina music scene with songs like the roaring “Funny Feelin’,” 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 “Making of the Man,” a wiry rock opener that brings to mind fellow Southerners The Glands.

Easy Easy Easy Easy was recorded live to tape on a Tascam 388 8-track recorder with Colin Swanson-White at Synaesthetics Studios in Raleigh. “It suits this album particularly well,” Corum says. “It’s got a certain looseness to it, in a good way.”

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 is clean and stable now, and the band is planning a short tour around the release. He describes “Funny Feelin’” 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?