The Chamber Strings are back after five years away, with a bunch of new songs and a headlining show Saturday at Double Door. That’s great news for anyone who cares about well written pop songs. But for Kevin Junior, the Chicago band’s singer, songwriter and resident visionary, the re-emergence represents something more: a second chance at life.
A couple of years ago, Junior nearly died a homeless, penniless drug addict on the streets of Los Angeles.
“I would go weeks without eating one single grain of food–nothing,” he says. “I didn’t even know who in the hell I was anymore. It was one of those things that you read about later and wonder, `How on Earth could you sink so low?'”
In 2001, Junior and the Chamber Strings were on the cusp of greatness. Their second album, “Month of Sundays” had just been released, and Junior was thrilled. He had put together his dream band (Anthony Illarde, Carolyn Engelmann, Tim Fowler, Jason Walker), one capable of playing the songs he heard in his head. And what songs they were: dark beauties imbued with rich harmonies, counterpoint melodies and cinematic colors, the kind of pop dreams that warrant serious discussion next to the work of Brian Wilson, Ray Davies, Laura Nyro or Alex Chilton.
“Month of Sundays” was ecstatically received by just about everyone who heard it. Though released on a small label (Bobsled) out of west suburban Aurora, the album had a resonance far beyond its modest sales, name-checked by musicians ranging from the New Pornographers’ Dan Bejar to Fallout Boy. The Chamber Strings once had the White Stripes as an opening act, headlined a sold-out three-night stand in Los Angeles, and extensively toured Europe.
Then everything bottomed out. Junior says the usual band and label squabbles were exacerbated by his heroin addiction. He had spiraled into depression after one of his best friends and frequent collaborators, British songwriter Epic Soundtracks, died in 1997, and drugs became Junior’s panacea. For a time, he fooled himself into thinking that he could function well while poisoning his body.
“I was able to write, arrange, produce and record `Month of Sundays’ as a complete junkie,” he says. “But when the record came out and we started touring in the van, it just started getting worse and worse. Everybody else had their own personal problems, too. We were tired and frustrated, and the label was going down the tubes, running out of money. We hated each other’s guts.”
Then Junior’s marriage of 15 years ended, and he silently left town with a bag of belongings. He ended up in Los Angeles where he would periodically check himself into detox clinics in an effort clean up. Each time he would end up back on the street, where he scored drugs, while sleeping in a cardboard box on skid row.
“I had accepted this as my life–just jabbing myself with needles every day and completely giving up on everything else,” he says. He was jailed three times for vagrancy, and lost all contact with family and friends. One day he found himself lying on a sidewalk, unable to move.
“I had one friend, a 60-year-old black guy, who picked me up and carried me to the bus, where we had to panhandle money to get to the hospital,” he says. “When I got to the hospital, there were about 500 people in the emergency room. They [the staff] took one look at me and put me ahead of everybody.”
He was diagnosed with a heart-valve infection that could’ve killed him within a day. He stayed in the hospital six weeks undergoing treatment with antibiotics. When he left, he was walking with a cane, and returned to his hometown of Akron, Ohio.
While homeless, he continued to write songs on a beat-up nylon-string guitar. At home, he began making demos, then moved to Europe to perform at the invitation of a friend. But he relapsed into drug addiction.
“I had moved to Berlin, the heroin capital of the world, so it was impossible to escape,” he says. He relocated to London, where he began working with a doctor who set him on the road to recovery.
“I just came to the point where I’d had enough,” he says. “I’d had enough of this crap. I didn’t want it. I didn’t like it. I was at the point mentally where I was ready to get cleaned up, to move back to the States and get on with my life.”
That was two years ago. Junior says he’s been drug-free ever since. He moved to New Orleans, wrote more songs, and got in touch with his old bandmates. Amends were made, apologies exchanged, and rehearsals began once Junior got back to town. He now lives in Pilsen with a girlfriend and a growing stash of guitars and records.
A couple of sparsely arranged songs have surfaced on the Chamber Strings’ myspace.com site. They tell a harrowing story. “And as the devil got a hold of my beliefs/I came apart so easily,” Junior sings on one of the new tunes.
“Those are straight-up accounts of what I was going through,” Junior says. The stirring melodies are still there, a shaft of light through the darkness. Ultimately, the new songs sound like a form of therapy. Junior agrees.
“I was always able to write when I was coming out of the fog,” he says. “It always felt like music takes you because you’re not in control of the decision. I’m a songwriter whether I like it or not. But the ultimate reward is I always wanted to touch people and basically take them to church. Songs can heal people. When I would get myself through these hard times I would just start singing songs in my head. That was the difference between me wanting to commit suicide and wanting to stay alive.”
Chamber Strings
When: 10 p.m. Saturday
Where: Double Door, 1572 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Price: $12; 773-489-3160
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greg@gregkot.com
Greg Kot co-hosts “Sound Opinions at 8 p.m. Fridays and 11 a.m. Saturdays on WBEZ-FM 91.5. The show will hold a free live taping at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Claudia Cassidy Theater in the Chicago Cultural Center, 77 E. Randolph St. RSVP at chicagopublicradio.org.
