Album Notes

This is Kurt Eger’s first CD release, Maybe in My Next Life. Incredible since he’s been writing songs for over 30 years. Eger lives in a mortgaged house south of Nashville with his wife and two sons. He has been busy holding down the day job, taking the boys to school, picking them up after school, crushing down milk cartons to fit in better and occasionally sparring with his wife and other antagonists of the real world over artistic-versus-family issues that inevitably crop up in the life of an artistic man.

When he was a boy with a Hagstrom guitar growing up in a Brooklyn cemetery (his father was the caretaker), Kurt set out to sharpen his skills, founding the Beverages, a loose association of young musicians who learned to sing barbershop under the pristine tutelage of one boy’s oft inebriated father. They would later move these skills forward into a perfectly pitch-black walk-in closet, where amongst the prom gowns and dusty suitcases, they explored complex vocal harmonies for hours, or at least until they feared the loss of eyesight, not to mention minds. But that was the mettle of the sixties, and this helped open the door to a world of pop composing for Mr. Eger. He has since penned a couple of hundred songs. That’s a lot of songs. He also played handball, but that’s another story.

One day, after eating some Mallomars kept on top of the fridge, Kurt decided to go into the studio and make a record. He picked out nine recently handwritten songs about the human condition--some rockers and some slow ones--and meticulously laid down tracks, enlisting the help of some well-known Nashville and New York musicians. Throughout, he has managed to keep his day job at the Vanderbilt Library, his wife and sons satisfied and his self-respect intact, a formidable performance in its own right.

In spite of the usual roadblocks that invariably throw a sopping blanket over the most sparkling dreams, Eger has managed to deliver right into your trim little hands, a long-overdue masterwork of modern pop songwriting. So this is Kurt Eger’s first CD-- and at last, at least in this lifetime, he is happy.

BERGMAN BROOM