Things are looking brighter. Corum has been clean and sober for about five years now, and somehow Lonnie Walker has kept the original lineup of guitarist Eric Hill, drummer Raymond Finn, keyboardist Justin Flythe and bassist Mic Robinson alongside him.
Corum formed North Carolina indie rock band Lonnie Walker in 2006 while he was still a student at East Carolina University, and they released their debut, These Times Old Times, in 2010.
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 cult following as it toured throughout the South over the next several years, sharing bills with bands such as Annuals and Future Islands.
The band digitally released its second album, Earth Canals, in 2015. That same year, however, Corum 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.
Catchy and loose-limbed, Easy Easy Easy Easy is also as harrowing as it is listenable. Highlights of the new album include songs like “Natural Lady,” which might be the most overt love song Corum has ever written, and the zippy kiss-off “Pissin’ Off the Scene.” And for groove and feel, the droning psychedelic tones of “Cool Sparkling Water” can’t be beat. 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. Offstage, Corum keeps busy running Rabbit Press, a custom screenprinting company (a process he learned while studying photography). He also works with The Healing Place, a Raleigh rehab center, trying to help get people on the same path he’s been on.
“We were really worried about Brian for a long, long time,” says guitarist Hill. “I don’t want to inflate his ego, but I’m super proud of him.”