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article and photos by george zahora
A week before I was scheduled to conduct this interview, Beulah announced their plans to disband at the end of their current tour. In some small way, this was a relief; I hadn't been able to muster nearly as much enthusiasm for Yoko, their fourth record, as I had for prior outings, and I wasn't sure what frontman Miles Kurosky and I would talk about. The band's breakup -- rumored in the months before Yoko's release, and not particularly surprising when the announcement finally game -- gave us a ready topic of conversation, albeit one that Miles had probably hashed and rehashed with dozens of other journalists prior to our discussion.
Kurosky, deathly ill and clearly tired of talking about his band's breakup, wasn't the most animated interview subject, but he didn't allow malady or malaise to compromise his performance; when Beulah played their last-ever Chicago show a few hours later, they burned the Abbey Pub to the ground, rolling out the best songs from Handsome Western States, When Your Heartstrings Break, The Coast is Never Clear and the (in my opinion) slightly less lovable Yoko. When you see one of your favorite bands for the last time, this is the way you want to remember them: having a blast, playing their hearts out, thrilling the crowd, and going 'til the venue threatens to kill the power.
I'll miss Beulah...but it's clear that we haven't heard the last of Miles Kurosky.
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Splendid: I had a bunch of of questions but I kind of had to retrench about hearing that this was the beginning of the end for Beulah. Is there any point in asking you why?
Miles Kurosky: Nah. Not really. I mean, all the logical reasons -- you know what I mean?
Splendid: Tired of it, want to move on to something else in life, start up the Miles Kurosky Experience?
Miles Kurosky: Yeah... Well, I don't know. You've gotta get out when it's right. Go out on top before things start to get worse. Before you become the aging indie athlete who's just staying in the game for the sake of staying in the game.
Splendid: So is four records the point when you figure it's time to get out while the going's good?
Miles Kurosky: Yeah. To me, it doesn't make much sense to keep going. It's tough being Beulah. I read your review of the record -- everybody has expectations. Everybody has their own expectations. We don't really have the freedom to do whatever we want, and so critically speaking -- which is always one of the most important things, how people perceive your records or write about your records or whatever -- you just...
Splendid: There's a point where you can't get away from what you've done in the past?
Miles Kurosky: No, of course not. And everyone has their favorite thing. We could just continue doing it, but in some ways I think we've left behind a pretty good legacy, and that's good enough.
Splendid: Do you plan on continuing to record music?
Miles Kurosky: Yeah, I've already written half a record. And oddly, or not oddly, it'll probably sound like the fifth Beulah record. But again, it won't have any expectations hovering over its head. It'll just be a record.
Splendid: How constrained do you feel by expectations? I mean, do you have the urge to start rapping?
Miles Kurosky: That's not the only reason. It's a lot of things, like getting older. Being done. Just being done. It just feels right to not be going on any more. I'm getting older, the guys are getting older, there are little Beulahs being born, people getting married. It's harder to tour. Touring's difficult. There's that. It's about expectations, it's about maybe we've reached our peak, maybe there's no point in trying to keep pushing it each time... There's all sorts of things, y'know? There's the idea that all indie bands, whether or not they reach a certain level, a plane, that they're obviously going to go downhill from there. We don't ever want to feel that. And here we are playing two nights at the Abbey. It was packed last night, and it'll be packed tonight.
Splendid: And here you are going up against Wilco, playing the same night they're playing, and it's still packed.
Miles Kurosky: Yeah! Well, cross your fingers that it's as packed as last night. But why wait 'til we come out on tour again, and maybe next time it's only one night at the Abbey? It just seems right to stop.
AUDIO: A Man Like Me (demo version)
Splendid: Is it hard to walk away from success?
Miles Kurosky: Somewhat. Depends on what you mean by success. I guess we've been successful to some degree. And I have to excuse myself for a moment...
(Miles excuses himself -- he isn't feeling well. While he's gone, I make a foolish mistake -- I pause the recording. When he returns, I think I've turned off the pause, but in fact I don't, and we talk for several minutes before I realize that the pause is still on. We discuss the fact that Miles hates touring, that it's physically hard on him, that Beulah has already gone further than he ever expected they would, and that he's eager to be a regular guy again.).
Splendid: I think I lost a chunk of that. I think the pause was still on.
Miles Kurosky: We were talking about regrets, right? That I have none?
Splendid: Yeah, that neatly summarizes it right there.
Miles Kurosky: We did what we did to the best of our abilities. We left our two cents, which is more than most bands can say.
Splendid: So to the twenty-something Beulah fan who gets this news on Monday, if they haven't already, and is totally inconsolable, what do you say?
Miles Kurosky: There'll be another Beulah right around the corner. There always is. Bands start up every day, and go away every day. There are all sorts of good bands to take our place. There's a couple dozen kids tonight who'll all be starting bands, and some of them might go on to make bands that everyone's going to love. We're never at a loss, or in need of new bands, are we? They're always coming, whether we like it or not. There's always a new band, and there'll always be a new band, and for people who like Beulah's style of music, I'm sure we've influenced enough kids to start bands that sound kinda Beulah-ish, and it'll just continue. That's like...the Pixies are getting back together, but I don't really give a shit. I saw the Pixies in 1990. I don't really care. They meant something then, but there are plenty of other bands that they've influenced... It's like dinosaurs. You die, you leave your fossils, and something else grows... That wasn't really a good analogy.
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Splendid: No, it was lovely.
Miles Kurosky: It's just the process, y'know? The evolutionary process of music. But all bands have to die. They all have to. Some people hopefully know when's a better time than others. Some people just stay forever.
Splendid: Sometimes it's hard to tell, isn't it? I'm sure if you get past a certain point in your life where you can't do anything else, you've gotta jump or stay on.
Miles Kurosky: Staying on isn't very attractive. I guess it is for some people. People have been asking "Why would you want to break up? Things are going well. You have kind of a career." I don't know.
Splendid: It's that Michael Jordan thing.
Miles Kurosky: Yeah. You get up like this and then you kinda feel...you do feel drawn back to the game, but hopefully you know when to go out when it's best for the band, and how you'll be perceived.
Splendid: We mentioned that the band went further than you ever expected it to. What was the best experience, the one you never thought you'd have, that you had as a result of being in Beulah?
Miles Kurosky: I've thought about that, because we all get a little sentimental. I don't know. I could go to easy ones like "Oh, we were on TV," or we did a festival here or we met somebody, but I don't really think that's it. I think in the end it'll be something odd and personal between us, that we shared a moment in these vans that we travel in, in our buses and our motel rooms. I think it'll be stuff like that. Because already, when we reminisce, we reminisce about those things -- we don't reminisce about "Oh man, that show was great," or "Wow, that show was great," or "Man, that record was fun to make!" We reminisce about the goofy dumbass things that happened, and weird things that happened. Stuff like that.
Splendid: Are there parts of the world that you wish you'd managed to play in that you never got to?
Miles Kurosky: No, not really. If I think about the places that we were supposed to go and we skipped for various reasons, like 9/11 or whatever, we were supposed to go to Australia. I don't really give a shit about that now. Australia just seems like California with a different accent. Brazil, we were supposed to go to.
Splendid: I hear that's a cool experience. Actually, I think Dean Wareham told me that was one of the coolest places he'd been.
Miles Kurosky: And then we were offered, last night, an opportunity to go somewhere that would make another last show, but it wouldn't matter to Americans. We were offered a spot in a festival in Hong Kong.
Splendid: Oh, you've gotta take that.
Miles Kurosky: Yeah, we might, actually. And it's past the last show thing. But I thought, "Jesus, a weekend in Hong Kong? We have to!"
Splendid: Earliest reunion tour ever.
Miles Kurosky: Exactly.
Splendid: You can get shirts made.
Miles Kurosky: Well, I don't think we'd even put it on the website. Why tell anybody in America about it?
Splendid: Otherwise someone's gonna try to fly to Hong Kong.
Miles Kurosky: Yeah, someone'll just give me grief. Why even tell 'em? If we do it, we'll just get on a plane and go. It's not like anybody in America's gonna go, anyway. Or needs to know about it, really.
Splendid: If I had four grand sitting around that I didn't know what to do with, maybe I'd go. I'd stay for some of the other bands, too, of course.
Miles Kurosky: So we might do that. Plus I need some more frequent flier miles. I need some more free flights.
Splendid: Where are you gonna go on those free flights?
Miles Kurosky: I'm going to Hawaii. I'm gonna go golfing in Hawaii.
Splendid: Excellent.
Miles Kurosky: Yeah, that's my thing. I don't know what else I'll do. I'm gonna rest for a little while after this tour. This tour's kicking my ass.
AUDIO: Me and Jesus Don't Talk Anymore (demo version)
Splendid: It doesn't seem like you really enjoy the hard parts of touring -- which I guess is all of it.
Miles Kurosky: Well, this one is particularly difficult because I've been sick a lot. And when you're sick, it's tough. I've had a lot of internal problems. Just incredible -- everything's just going wrong inside. I've been on three antibiotics in the last month. So that, coupled with stomach ailments like I'm having now where I can't hold food down, that's tough. And that doesn't happen when I'm at home -- or if it does, I have my bed that I can crawl into and stay in bed for 24 hours until I feel better. But I don't have a bed that I can stay in for 24 hours. I'm rarely any place for 24 hours.
Splendid: Do you at least have a stable enough situation that you can go to the doctor?
Miles Kurosky: Yeah, but I'm with Kaiser and there's no Kaisers except for fucking California and Georgia and a couple of other states. It's ridiculous. (Editor's Note: Let's avoid running a clarification later; Kaiser's website lists doctors in California, Colorado, the DC Area, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia and Washington.) And then, if you go someplace else, you have to prove that it was an emergency. Otherwise you have to pay the bill.
Splendid: That's irritating.
Miles Kurosky: It is irritating. But luckily, there are a lot of rock doctors -- you know, people who donate their time. Doctors who say, "Hey, give me a couple of CDs. I like the band. I'll come to the show," and then they'll diagnose you and get you some medication.
Splendid: Is there a whole secret network of rock doctors? I've always wondered if there's something -- some kind of symbol on the sign or something.
Miles Kurosky: Not so much secret, but you definitely have to know. You can ask around. You get here and you ask, "Hey, is there a rock doctor? Is there a doctor who helps out, who comes to shows?" There's probably, like, a 28 year-old doctor who's like, "Aww, yeah, man, cool. Can I get, like, two CDs?" And then he checks you out, writes you up a prescription and you're good to go. It's pretty nice, actually. I've only met three of 'em, but I assume that they're in other places, too.
Splendid: In just about every town, probably, if you look hard enough.
Miles Kurosky: I'm assuming in most of the major places, like here (Chicago), New York. The ones I've met are in, like, Seattle, Austin...places like that.
Splendid: So, since we've dwelled on The End long enough, let's move forward. I know you have new material that you're working on. I don't know how much you want to talk about that... What can we expect to see from the Miles Kurosky solo material? Or will it actually be solo material?
Miles Kurosky: Again, oddly enough, it's going to sound like Beulah. I can't get away from Beulah. Beulah is me and I am Beulah; I can't escape it, really. So in a lot of ways it'll probably sound like a fifth Beulah record, because I won't want to repeat myself and I'll want to challenge myself. It'll be good -- I don't like making records with fat or filler. It should be tight. It'll be similar. I'll just do it a little differently.
Splendid: You're not gonna go metal or hook up with an industrial band or anything like that?
Miles Kurosky: No, no, no. It'll be similar instrumentation. Just different. It'll just be the next progressive step. The best thing is probably not to go too far -- anything contrived, where you force yourself into something that you're not. The thing is, I write pop songs. That's what I do. I shouldn't really stray too far.
Splendid: No concept album about elves just yet, then?
Miles Kurosky: No, there'll never be one of those. I have friends who do things with electronic music and I think, "Oh, that'd be fun." I'm sure I could make a crazy record, an avant garde sort of jazz record, but I don't think I'd promote it in the same way. Too many people would be disappointed. They'd think I've lost my mind.
Splendid: Now, if your solo stuff takes off immediately on the strength of Beulah's reputation, will that be going against what you want?
Miles Kurosky: Because then I'd have to tour?
Splendid: Yeah, you'd have to tour, and you'd have to stay in this life that you kind of want to get away from.
Miles Kurosky: I'm hoping I don't have to tour ever again. But if it got big, I guess I would. I don't know. The funny thing with life is that there's some credence to the "never say never" thing. Because you just don't know. I don't know. Anything can happen. Right now it doesn't look very good, but I guess if we got big enough... I certainly don't want to start from scratch and "slug it out". I don't want to start from scratch and do it like Beulah did. If there was enough interest and it blew up in the way that bands like The Shins and Death Cab have blown up lately -- indie has done well. Maybe I'd play some high profile shows in big cities, hit Chicago and New York or something.
Splendid: On the other hand, more and more we're seeing people who can sit at home and make CDRs every six months and sell 500 of 'em and that's their living.
Miles Kurosky: I don't know. I think I'll just get on a label and put it out. There are already labels who've said they'd help, that they'd like to hear what I do and maybe put it out. I'm at a loss.
Splendid: Do you crank out material pretty fast, or is it one of those long, torturous processes?
Miles Kurosky: No, it's horrible. I'm the least prolific fucking songwriter in the world. It takes me forever.
Splendid: How much stuff do you throw out?
Miles Kurosky: Not a lot, because usually when I know it's crap, I know it's crap.
Splendid: Early on.
Miles Kurosky: Yeah, that's why there's not a lot of excess Beulah material. I know when it's bad -- in the five minutes that I'm singing it, I usually go, "Oh, forget this."
Splendid: There really isn't a lost Beulah record out there, is there? There's nothing. One or two hard to find B-sides.
Miles Kurosky: Yeah, because everything we've done has to be a song. A real song. We have the opposite problem of somebody like Bob Pollard -- the total opposite problem.
AUDIO: Wipe Those Prints and Run (demo version)
Splendid: Well, he can only really remember a hundred of his songs at any given time. At least you know your whole discography.
Miles Kurosky: We've never done so much that we've watered down our own discography, either. It's still pretty solid. Even if people don't like certain records or certain songs, it's still all conceived and plotted songs -- not a lot of fluff. We've never been a very big fluff band.
Splendid: So if there's one song that embodies Beulah for you, what is it?
Miles Kurosky: It's impossible to say. We've changed so much from album one to to two to three to four -- they're so different. I heard Handsome Western States recently, and I don't know how you can even compare one of those songs to Yoko.
Splendid: It's a lot rawer.
Miles Kurosky: Yeah, they're night and day. One is what it was, and one is what it is now. We were something, and we are something... I like that, though. That we were different things. I just don't think there's one song that can sum up what Beulah is.
Splendid: Anything else you'd like to add to Beulah's interviewing legacy on Splendid?
Miles Kurosky: Umm...no... (Pause) I was a bad interview today, wasn't I?
Splendid: No, you're not a bad interview.
Miles Kurosky: I'm a little more resigned or mellow today. I think I'm just beat. Exhausted. I've got to learn how to sleep better.
Splendid: Well, you're not having to sleep in the van, are you? You get to sleep in beds.
Miles Kurosky: Yeah, we go to hotels. We have two nights here in a hotel downtown. It's nice. But I get distracted. Today was our day off, so I slept 'til noon, but I didn't go to bed 'til six, which is my own damn fault.
Splendid: That indie rock lifestyle.
Miles Kurosky: That's what I'm saying. I get distracted. Sidetracked, and I don't know what to do. There's a little devil on one shoulder and a little angel on the other.
Splendid: You can put it all aside, buy yourself a bunch of sweater vests and hardback books and sit around, and go to bed at ten for a while...
Miles Kurosky: I go back to the hotel before everyone else. All the time I should be sleeping, but... I go back to the hotel, but I'm not actually sleeping.
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George Zahora won't ever take a bullet for you.
[ graphics credits :: header/pulls - george | photos - yup, still george :: credits graphics ]
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