TRiP – Santa Monica, CA

Jan 20, 2012, Friday - 8:00 PM

Linnaea’s Cafe’ – San Luis Obispo, CA

Jan 22, 2012, Sunday -8:00 PM

The Abbey Lounge – Santa Cruz, CA

Jan 24, 2012, Tuesday - 6:00 PM

Streetlight Records – San Jose, CA

Jan 25, 2012, Wednesday - 7:00 PM

Rockit Room – San Francisco, CA

Jan 26, 2012, Thursday - 8:00 PM

Revival Bar and Kitchen – Berkeley, CA

Jan 27, 2012, Friday - 8:00 PM

The Plough and Stars – San Francisco, CA

Written By Cory Frye – Man, I tell ya: Last Friday I staggered home feeling like a whipped mongrel. My eyes were heavier than six Boris albums, Charlie Brown could’ve pitched a no-hitter atop my posture and my mind was stuffed with enough grim weariness to nurture a planet of Eeyores.

That is, until I found my copy of Casey Hurt’s “Mended Souls.” It’s been my go-to these last couple of weeks as I’ve watched doldrums devour winter’s last scraps and drown the valley in dolorous torrents. Even from Los Angeles, the city he now calls home, the former Corvallis resident’s rustic holler, sweetened with welcoming mesquite, enveloped my living room — I freed him from my ear buds; you gotta let him breathe — and eased me into serenity.

“I know the journey’s long,” Hurt sings on opening track “I’ll Be Near,” “but each distance deserves a song / and this song deserves a band.” Check and check, amen: These 11 new cuts are essayed by a crack unit of solid players. Patrick Cahill’s light, sunny Rhodes strolls carefree through “I’ll Be Near,” then chugs along a bump ’n’ grind swagger on “When We Touch.” It’s a longing Hurt feels to his fingertips (“Why don’t we just draw the shades,” he suggests, “and take a little time to misbehave?”), his voice lifting “sweet” to a sanctified high.

Yet Hurt’s not a man of wanton desires; his album is dedicated to “all the women in my life,” and his every proposal’s delivered from a place of affection and concern. Warmed by Sebastian Leger’s trumpet, “I Don’t Need That” is a self-empowerment tutorial: “Intoxicated by his candlelight / a sweet-nothing serenade seems to feel so right / But promises he whispers in your ear / won’t mean a thing to him when he disappears.” The trumpet returns on “Sing to You” for a different purpose: to woo-pitch what we can assume is romantic-interlude sincerity.

Hurt is accompanied on “Higher” by singer Evan Roman; her voice lifts his through a joyous pop soundscape as vast as a metropolitan skyline. “Babylon” finds him dabbling in hip-hop with Jon Beavers and Ian Merrigan of 6Brooks. The duo’s flow melds nicely with the concept of the Biblical city and its mixture of tongues (genres).

But it’s the simplest, most intimate songs that prove the most affecting. A mandolin shivers beneath a bare acoustic lead as Hurt admits to contentment with “doing nothing / as long as nothing, that nothing is with you” (“Doing Nothing”). “Sunday Mornings” is a spare little jaunt for those precious moments in bed before the rest of the world has risen, when it seems as if you and your beloved are truly a universe of two.

It’s what exists beyond this universe that occupies Hurt on the final track, the title track, a powerful consideration of a bond everlasting. The spectral wingspan of Mike McGraw’s lap steel guitar carries the singer’s words deep into the heavens. I’m not a religious man by any means, but I take some comfort in the notion of an eternity with the ones we’ve loved in life, free of pain, our spirits uplifted, renewed and rendered whole.

As the gloom of Friday dissipated and the light returned at last, I sat in quiet wonder that such joyful, healing music could come from a guy named Hurt.

Welcome home.

Article By: Takeema Hoffman
Photographs Courtesy of: Lauren Hurt (www.laurenhurt.com)

There is a certain tone to Casey Lee Hurt’s voice. It is a kind of stoic tranquility that draws you in until you find yourself fixed in a state of rapt attention. In the study of vibrational healing, the human voice is regarded as a powerful tool which can be used to raise the vibrations of the energy body to higher and more positive levels. With that in mind it is not far-fetched to think of someone like Hurt possessing such a power in his voice, especially given the nature and intent of the energy he pours generously into his craft. His music is all heart and soul; passionate, radiant, transcendent, and transparent. With the release of his new album, Mended Souls, he is aiming to grab listeners by the ears and hearts, and give them a little something that will move their bodies and lift their spirits as well.… To read more click here.

I’ll be hiding in the studio for the next few months in hopes of release a great new album during the first week of april. I’m very excited, I hope you are too. Please forgive me silence, I promise I’m hard at work.

Sincerely,

Casey Lee Hurt

112 N. Tower Ave.
Centralia, WA 98531

APRIL 6TH -The Edgefield – 7:00pm

2126 S.W. Halsey St.
Troutdale, OR 97060

APRIL 7TH -The Edgefield – 7:00pm

2126 S.W. Halsey St.
Troutdale, OR 97060

APRIL 8TH -The Edgefield – 7:00pm

2126 S.W. Halsey St.
Troutdale, OR 97060

APRIL 9th -Cloud 9 -9:00pm

126 SW First Street
Corvallis, Oregon 97333

APRIL 14th – McCLAINS COFFEE HOUSE – 7:00pm

817 N Harbor Blvd
Fullerton, CA 92832-1521

with Mike Vitale and the Black Sheep Show

APRIL 16th – O’BRIANS PUB – 8:00pm

2941 Main St
Santa Monica, CA 90405

with BJ Allman, Bella Boncat, 6brooks, Socks and Chimes and the Brian Buckley Band

MAY 9th – REDWOOD BAR – 8:00pm

316 West 2nd St # 202
Los Angeles, CA 90012-3527

with Midwest Dilemma, Driftwood Singers and Vinnie Ferra

MORE DATES TO FOLLOW