Lee AdcockCreative minds often work best in isolation. Many artists wrestle with their schedules to wedge in some quality private time, which can lead to long, late nights alone. Ryan Engelberger has certainly been there before. Some of the songs that now grace his album debut as the genteel Curt Castle have been stewing for quite some time—but lately, the stranded singer-songwriter has been wary about becoming a shut-in again. “It becomes this slippery slope of, ‘Oh, I need to get up when the sun’s going down, so everyone will be asleep, and I don’t need to talk to them,'” he tells me. “I could just get lost inside my own head when I have that life.”
With If I’m Here At All, Engelberger ultimately rejected that narrative. Over the past three years, the Castle collective expanded out of one man’s mind into a colorful cast of friends, who helped shape the heartland ballads and synth-pop bops into lush horizons that burst with color. And Engelberger, in his journey to find life after Athens, found a new home where he least expected one—among the blossoms in Asheville.
Scared of being alone
Engelberger hasn’t always worked alone. In fact, Curt Castle rose from an intense, 45-day-long period of exile from back in 2015. His last two bands, Athens’ beloved weirdos Reptar and Atlanta bardic troupe Semicircle, were both phasing out around the same time. Simultaneously, Engelberger was breaking up with his girlfriend, who he was then living with. “Literally the day before we left on that Semicircle tour—we had band practice, and then instead of packing our stuff into the van, it was like, ‘Who wants to help me pack my stuff out of my place?'” Engelberger recalls. “‘I have an hour window when she’s not going to be there, and that’s going to be the best time for all of us.'”
After all those social outlets were ripped away, Engelberger was left at a crossroads. He had a few songs worked out, including the album’s current opener “Chances,” his direct response to the relationship that had been unwinding for months. But without any familiar faces to provide feedback, he had no clue whether he should flesh them out or not. “I was looking for those voices to keep me grounded in a social way, but also to tell me this was a project worth working on,” he says. “And I don’t know if this is true for you, but if somebody tells me that they like what I do, then it’s really affirming [the first time], but if a person says it a couple of times, then it’s like, ‘Well, I’ve heard it from you. That’s not enough anymore.'”
For the isolated songwriter, then, If I’m Here At All lowered the drawbridge. Granted, large chunks of the album were still hashed out in relative isolation, with talk-of-the-town producer Drew Vandenberg at Chase Park Transduction. But whenever possible, Engelberger opened Curt Castle’s gates to his “super-talented” friends, both around town and across the country in Olympia. In all, about fifteen folks over three different studios pop up in the album’s credits, lending everything from backup vocals and extra riffs to full-blown solos and arrangements. “Every time I play with someone I haven’t played with before, even if it’s like, ‘I don’t know if I want to play music with that person again,’ I’m always glad that I did,” Engelberger says. “I put myself in a situation to play a little differently, because they’re playing differently than anyone I’ve ever played with.”
So while a fine, Avalon-esque mist might coat the entire landscape, the members in each song rearrange the scenery each time. “We had all these incredible people come our way, [so we were] just like, ‘Well, what do you want to do, and how do you want to do it?'” Engelberger explains. Josh Pittman (Floral Rpint) lends those meaty guitars that push “Afraid of the Lightning” and “Nightwalker” into Bob Seger territory; Catherine Quesenberry (Qurious, Shampoo) adds the washes of synth that lend otherworldly chills to “Wistful” and “Worms.” Elsewhere, McKendrick Bearden (Grand Vapids) helped transform pastoral enigma “Free to Wander” into a ominous journey through Engelberger’s mind, where one step toward isolation could spiral into darkness. “Drew had a lot of crazy recording ideas on that one, where McKendrick and I were both sitting in different parts of the woods outside of the studio,” he tells me. “And Drew was just walking around with a field recorder, intentionally stumbling on us.”
And then there’s “Chances,” and the Technicolor illusion invented overnight by Javier Morales. As the mastermind of holographic jukebox Dream Scene, the jack-of-all trades musician (who’s now touring with Deerhunter) could pull up to the studio with clarinets, flutes, and more. But as a seasoned bedroom producer, he was far more accustomed to working alone. “Drew and I are [telling each other], ‘Yeah, we’re moving really quickly, we’ve got a saxophone line down, we’ve got a flute doubled, we’re about to move on to a harmony,'” Engelberger recalls. “And Javier’s just like, ‘Sorry, guys, I feel like I’m just moving really slow.'” The next day, about 12 hours after leaving the studio, Morales returns with a dazzling new arrangement, replete with harpsichord, violin, viola, and pizzicato strings. “He’s gone complete Brian Wilson on this whole song, somewhere between 1 a.m. and 12 p.m. in the morning,” Engelberger says. “And I’m like, ‘Dude! Did you sleep at all last night?’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, I slept the normal amount.’ And I don’t know what that means for him.”
While some musicians may balk at this loosely formed band structure, Engelberger saw the friend-for-hire approach as the only viable way forward. “The whole ‘Hey, guess what, you can’t be in any of the bands you used to be in’ kind of thing has made me [respond with], ‘OK, so I don’t have solutions that I know are going to work, so I’m just going to take a gamble on whatever this is,'” he reveals. Little did he realize, until about a year ago, how much those gambles would shape his new persona.
Credit: Rose Egle
Aligned with the design
If I’m Here At All gained much of its mysterious shimmer from Engelberger’s friends in Athens, but the heart of the album was drawn in Asheville. At first, he’d migrated to Atlanta, and worked for the restaurant chain Farm Burger. But then a business trip to install a point of sales system brought him to Asheville, where he met illustrator and fabric artist Rose Egle. “We talked a whole lot, and we really hit it off just talking,” he recalls. “[And] both of us are very reserved people when it comes to meeting people in that context.”
About a week later, Engelberger had a rare hiatus on his hands. After blocking off some days from work to record in the studio, he realized that his actual appointment with Drew wasn’t until next week. On a whim, he texted the woman from Farm Burger about his newfound free time. “I’m not bold enough to be like ‘Hey, I’m going to come visit you,'” he tells me. “But I’m going to give them every possible reason to ask me to visit. And she did. It fell together unlike anything in my life ever has.”
The dream date that ensued sparked Engelberger’s imagination at once. After a blissful day of hiking around Egle’s apartment and the nearby Lake Powhatan, Engelberger returned to his friend Reid Weigner’s house with fairy tales and incomplete novels tumbling in his head. On the morning that he was about to leave for Athens, he sat down at an organ by the front door and played the soothing hymn that eventually became “Across State Lines.” “I recorded it on my phone, because I was like, ‘Oh, that’s nice,'” he recalls. “By the time I got to Athens, I had all the words in my head… by the end of the night, it pretty much was entirely recorded.”
The only parts that Engelberger added later were the dainty chimes of Wagner’s handmade tubaphone, which he captured on a return trip to Asheville. “I thought it was cool, because we recorded it in the house where that first recording actually started,” he remarks.
Of course, Egle gifted Engelberger with more than a beautiful song—she helped design Curt Castle’s identity. The delicate flowers on both the Afraid of the Lightning 7″ and If I’m Here At All were hand-printed by Egle. For the latter, she layered several blocks of pink prints to create blushing gradients in the petals. “There’s this intricate texture, and it’s not computer-generated,” Engelberger adds. “[It’s] just that aesthetic of, everything is going to be in its place, and minimal where it needs to be, and the parts that have color are going to be intricate and detailed.” The two covers also mark a creative genesis for Egle, too. Since her serendipitous encounter with Engelberger at Farm Burger, she’s finally quit the service industry to create serene pieces of embroidery art, sold under the moniker Studio Que Sera.
Engelberger has completely embraced Egle’s style as part of his own. “It helps bring out the softness of the lyrics, and the possibly misperceived machismo of the guitars,” he explains. “It is funny, because I’ve got T-shirts with this design on them. And it’s funny, the amount of guys who come up and say, I want a T-shirt… and [then] they say, ‘Do you got anything without flowers?’ And I’m like, ‘Man, just wear the flowers! What are you afraid of?'”
Granted, that delicacy did not pan out in Curt Castle’s record release show at the EARL, a day after this conversation. There, a certain brash bassist from Athens psych band Axxa/Abraxas strutted around the stage with sunglasses, as if he’d been granted a shot at reliving his Jagger rock star dreams. “Hope you liked the show—or else I’ll kill ya!” he boasted at the end of the set. He didn’t seem like the type that would unironically permit exquisite flowers on his T-shirts.
Still, one misbehaving member aside, Engelberger plans to keep building the fortress of his dreams with camaraderie and serendipity. He now lives in the same apartment as Egle, poised to plant new roots after those 45 days of turmoil three years ago. And, now that If I’m Here At All has taken seed in the world, he hopes to crank out more tunes as soon as he can—not to throw darts at the void, but to extend his plight to others who might need to embark on that journey, too. “Music has helped me a whole lot. It makes me feel more connected to other people and to humanity,” he says. “And so, if I can be a part of that too for someone else, then that would be spectacular.”
More Info
Web: curtcastle.com
Bandcamp: curtcastle.bandcamp.com
Facebook: @curtcastle
Instagram: @curtcastlega
SoundCloud: @curtcastle
Twitter: @CurtCastleGA