Kerry Courtney has a big, bushy, brunette beard that cloaks the round contours of his face. The gauges in his earlobes also grab your attention. What’s truly arresting about the 27-year-old songwriter, however, is his eyes. The pupils are piercing and lined by thin brown circles. His irises appear lighter when seen in direct sunlight, but they grow more and more iridescent, like emeralds, when he glances your way indoors. There is a strong sense of intent, plus boatloads on sincerity, floating within Courtney’s lookers, and Bay area fans of introspective, sprawling folk will soon be able to hear what he’s been cooking up this year.
Courtney — who opens for Athens, Georgia dream-pop band Easter Island on Sunday — was born in New Jersey, and moved to Florida soon after. He currently lives in Tarpon Springs, but his musical home is in St. Petersburg, where his booming vocal can be heard in various clubs and listening rooms. His band — which formerly performed as Goodnight Neverland, and Come Now Sleep before that — works and plays under his given name these days, but the lineup has featured the same players for the last decade and a half.
“I spent a lot of time in solitude to create something that was actually a part of me.”
“It’s funny because in the first four or five years of our existence, from 11 years old to 15 or 16, we didn’t play outside of our church,” Courtney told CL when explaining the origins of his band. Courtney’s father was the worship leader for the 5,000-person congregation, and the practice room — complete with a drum kit and amps — was attached to Dad’s office. Courtney wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music in his youth (although the Beatles and U2 somehow got a pass). One day, as the band was screaming its way through a practice, a member of the choir told the boys that what they were making was demonic.
“We just closed the door, locked it and turned our amps up even more,” Courtney said. The situation did allow the band to practice for at least three hours every week for years and years, which is rare for some groups. “That chemistry, playing with those guys, they’re my best friends. They’re family more than blood family. I’m closer to them than most people on this earth.”
For the last four months, Courtney has taken that family and introduced them to Matt Wilbur, who works at Lakeland’s Vanguard Room recoding studio. The studio was established in 1999 by Wilbur and Aaron Marsh, who is the producer and vocalist for indie-rock favorites Copeland. A handful of Florida favorites, including You Blew It!, MrENC, Summerbirds In The Cellar, Macrame Owls and The Dark Romantics, have cut records there, along with national artists like Person L, Lydia, This Wild Life and Marsh’s new Lulls In Traffic project. Vanguard has been one of the anchors of a Lakeland creative scene that’s always bubbled with activity. These days, the town that is home to places like Hillcrest Coffee and ART/ifact feels like a community in bloom.
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Courtney started recording with Wilbur in January, and expected to be done a month later, but being in the studio with a trusted creative partner has led to a flurry of creative ideas and a commitment to making sure every inch of tape offers the best representation of who Courtney is today. It took him three years to write the songs on the still-untitled release, and Courtney won’t release it until it’s the truest reflection of himself.
“I spent a lot of time in solitude writing this record to dive deep into myself so I could create something that I not only believed in, but to create something that was actually a part of me,” Courtney — who is influenced by Patrick Watson, Sufjan Stevens, and Sigur Ros — said. He explained that the new album is more musical than anything else he’s ever done. He’s also less guarded than he’s ever been.
“So much has changed in my life. I’m not worried about impressing anybody. Not, like, ‘I don’t care what anybody thinks,’ but I believe that when you create art of any type you can’t care what anybody thinks,” he said, citing radio hits that are written in the spirit of gaining airplay. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that — it’s just not the purest form of art. Pure art comes from when you’re not worried about anyone’s perspective outside of you making it.
“This album is a genuine representation of how I view the deeper things in life and the heavy or dark years I’ve been going through,” he added. Those heavy and dark times circle around major physical and mental health issues that oftentimes left Courtney lacking the motivation or inspiration to even pick up an instrument.
“Writing these songs at such a vulnerable place was important for this album. It isn’t fully about what I was going through though, it’s about the things life has taught me through those things I was going through,” Courtney explained. He knows that others go through similar, emotionally tough situations in their day-to-day lives, and in a way hopes that these songs can help others get through their days, come out alive and on the way to some semblance of happiness.
“My hope is for folks to understand what I’m truly saying with these songs,” he said of the album’s intent. “Maybe through that understanding they can learn and grow and apply it to their life in a positive way if it resonates with them.”
