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Old Haunts Demos Written 1999 to 2004 Sat in a Cardboard Box for Twenty Years
Read down the credits for Old Haunts and the same name fills nearly every line. Shon Aguero is the writer (Boneyard he co-wrote with Marcus Blair), the producer, the mix engineer and the mastering engineer, and when you reach the artwork it is his again. On a sleeve those roles are usually spread across several people, each one a fresh pair of ears catching what the last one missed. Here a single listener carried the songs from the first word to the last adjustment, and then decided how they should look.
That choice says something about the songs themselves. Most of them went into a box more than twenty years ago, and when it came time to finish them, at Whisper Court Studio in the spring of 2026, Aguero kept it in his own hands. Back then they were written and recorded the way a working songwriter did it, with no idea whether anyone would ever hear them. You can hear the patience of someone who has lived with the material long enough to know exactly what it needs.
Words You Say, fourth of the six, shows it best. It is a song about remembered counsel, and the arrangement treats memory like that as something that arrives in surges. The arrangement pares back for the first verse, with closed hi-hats keeping steady eighth notes and light acoustic guitar strumming tucked into the background, and then the drums rise in the pre-chorus as a walking bass line starts up. Listen to the drums as the song heads into each chorus. Tom fills roll in and pull you over the edge, and the snare sits on two and four with a plate reverb that gives it a little room to breathe without washing it out. It sounds like a decision rather than a default, the kind a producer makes when he is also the one who will have to live with it at the mastering stage.
Then, straight after the first chorus, comes the moment I would point anyone towards. An electric guitar steps out with a melodic hook over the rhythm section, and the overdrive on it is mild. That restraint matters. Pushed harder, the line would turn into a statement of its own; held where it is, it sings the chorus back to you in a different voice, as if the advice has gone round your head once and is coming back for a second hearing. It is a small figure, and it is the one I find myself humming.
There is real craft in knowing when not to add. A record made almost entirely by one person could easily become crowded, every idea let in because there was nobody to say no. Old Haunts goes the other way. Even the artwork belongs to the same sensibility, an extension of a record that was always going to be seen through one set of eyes.
Old Haunts is out now. Start with Words You Say and wait for that guitar after the first chorus, then go back to the opener, Then Again, and let the EP run from there to Boneyard. Listen there for the key change into the final chorus, so seamless you only feel the lift.
