The Houghton / Curry Project: Finishing a Friend's Songs, From The Stem

Album art for The Houghton / Curry Project showing a plasma globe and guitars in a home studio under the title Bob Houghton Music

Quick summary

When Boise singer-songwriter Brian Curry died by suicide in 2011, he left behind roughly twenty songs he had recorded with his friend and collaborator, producer Bob Houghton of Meridian, Idaho. Before his death, Curry had told Houghton to finish the songs and get them heard, as long as Curry was credited as the writer. Fifteen years later, Houghton reopened the old Pro Tools sessions and began building full productions around Curry's preserved vocals and acoustic guitar. The result is The Houghton / Curry Project, a planned nine-song release. Houghton intends to donate half of any revenue to The Speedy Foundation, a suicide-prevention nonprofit, in Curry's name.

Key takeaways

The Houghton / Curry Project completes songs written by the late Boise songwriter Brian Curry, who died by suicide in 2011.
Producer Bob Houghton recorded about twenty of Curry's songs as live vocal and acoustic performances, and is finishing nine of them as full productions.
Curry asked Houghton to finish the songs and release them as long as Curry kept songwriting credit. The project is built to honor that request.
Curry is credited as songwriter, lead vocalist, and acoustic guitarist on every track. Houghton handles all other instruments, production, mixing, and mastering, with backing vocals from Mandi Anderson on some songs.
Houghton plans to donate fifty percent of any revenue from the album to The Speedy Foundation, a suicide-prevention organization, in Curry's name.

A promise made between two friends

Some catalogs are built on a release calendar. This one was built on a promise.

Around 2008, Meridian, Idaho producer and multi-instrumentalist Bob Houghton met Boise singer-songwriter Brian Curry, known to those around him as BC. For the next three years, the two worked on Curry's songs and played music together, recording as they went. Houghton captured roughly twenty of Curry's songs as live performances, just vocals and acoustic guitar, the way Curry wrote and played them.

At some point during those years, Houghton asked Curry a simple question: what should happen to the songs if anything ever happened to him? Curry's answer was direct. Do whatever you want with them. Turn them into full songs. Just make sure he got credit for writing them, and get them out there for the world to hear.

Brian Curry playing an acoustic guitar outdoors — Brian "BC" Curry, the Boise songwriter at the heart of the project.

When the songs went quiet

Brian Curry died by suicide in 2011. He was 48.

The recordings the two friends had made went quiet for years. They sat on an older hard drive, captured in an earlier version of Pro Tools, a small archive of a writer's voice and the songs he wanted heard. For a long time, Houghton did not open them.

When he finally did, the technical side of the work turned out to be the easy part. The old session files imported into his current setup without major problems, which is far from guaranteed for recordings that old. The performances were intact. Curry's vocals and acoustic guitar were exactly where he had left them. What remained was the harder, more human task of building around them without getting in their way.

Building the records around a preserved performance

Houghton's approach keeps Curry at the center of every track. Curry is credited as the songwriter, lead vocalist, and acoustic guitarist on all of the songs. Houghton plays the rest of the instruments and adds some backing vocals, with additional backing vocals from Mandi Anderson on a number of the tracks. Recording, production, mixing, and mastering are all Houghton's work.

Bob Houghton and Brian Curry working together in a home recording studio — Houghton and Curry during the original sessions that captured the performances now being completed.

That order of operations matters. Rather than re-cutting the songs, Houghton is producing outward from a fixed core. The lead vocal and the acoustic guitar are the foundation; everything else is arranged to serve them. It is a way of finishing the work that protects the original authorship instead of overwriting it.

It's kind of been like collaborating with a ghost.Bob Houghton, on completing Brian Curry's recordings

Houghton has described the work in exactly those terms. Building a finished record around a voice that cannot answer back changes the producer's job. Every arrangement decision is also a question of trust, a guess at what the writer would have wanted, with only the preserved performance to answer it.

The plan is a nine-song release. Houghton has been completing them one at a time and is finishing the final track now. Several are already public, with more to follow as the productions are done.

Bob Houghton, Brian Curry, and a third musician playing music together in a home studio — The collaboration era, roughly 2008 to 2011, when most of the recordings were made.

One song that lands differently now

Among the finished tracks, one carries a weight that is hard to set aside. It is called "Playing Fool," and Houghton points to it as the song that stays with him. In it, Curry writes toward something larger than the moment.

The other side is calling, calling out to me. When the time comes, will I just let it be.

Read today, with everything that came after, the lines carry a resonance Curry could not have known a listener would one day hear in them. The project does not present the song as a message or a prophecy. It simply lets Curry's own words stand, the way he wrote and sang them, and trusts the listener to sit with what they hold.

Where to hear it

The music lives on Bandcamp as the main listening destination, with additional presence on SoundCloud. The project's home page is on Facebook, and a consolidated set of links is gathered on Linktree. The songs are not yet on the major streaming services, but Houghton has said they are planned for release there soon.

Half the proceeds, in Curry's name

Houghton has framed the release as more than a catalog project. He has said he plans to donate fifty percent of any revenue the album generates to The Speedy Foundation, in Brian Curry's name. The Speedy Foundation is a Boise-based nonprofit focused on suicide prevention and mental-health education, founded in 2011 in memory of Olympic skier Jeret "Speedy" Peterson.

Tying the release to that cause connects the project to the reality of how Curry died, and turns the act of finishing his songs into something that can help others.

Honoring the writer

At its core, this is not a story about release strategy or archival production technique. It is about a songwriter whose work could have stayed unheard, and a friend who promised it would not.

Brian Curry wrote these songs. He asked that they be finished, that his name stay on them, and that they reach the world. The Houghton / Curry Project exists to do exactly that.

If you or someone you know is struggling, you can reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the United States by calling or texting 988.

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Frequently asked

What is The Houghton / Curry Project?

It is a collection of songs written by the late Boise singer-songwriter Brian Curry, produced and completed by his friend and collaborator Bob Houghton. Curry recorded the songs as live vocal and acoustic performances before his death in 2011. Houghton is finishing them as full productions and releasing them under the project name.

Who was Brian Curry?

Brian Curry, known as BC, was a singer-songwriter based in Boise, Idaho. He wrote and performed his own songs and collaborated closely with producer Bob Houghton from around 2008 until his death by suicide in 2011. On The Houghton / Curry Project he is credited as the songwriter, lead vocalist, and acoustic guitarist on every track.

Where can I hear the music?

The project is available on Bandcamp and SoundCloud, with a project page on Facebook and a consolidated link hub on Linktree. The songs are not yet on the major streaming services, but Bob Houghton has said they are planned for release there soon.

Is the project tied to a charity?

Bob Houghton has said he plans to donate fifty percent of any revenue generated by the album to The Speedy Foundation, a Boise-based suicide-prevention and mental-health nonprofit, in Brian Curry's name.