Shon Aguero releases ‘Old Haunts’ EP

Originally from Heavener, Oklahoma, Shon Aguero has always used songwriting as a way of keeping track of life as it happens. He began playing music in church as a child in the eastern part of the state, before moving on to bands in high school and college. Those early experiences eventually led to years of performing across the southwestern United States, including shows with Blake Shelton. By 2003 and 2004, his career was gathering momentum, with opportunities to open for bigger acts, press coverage and award nominations suggesting that music could become a lasting profession.

But life took a different direction and for family reasons Shon stepped away, spending the years that followed building a career in business instead. The songs, however, never entirely disappeared and between 1999 and 2004, during his early twenties, Shon had penned dozens of compositions, often approaching the process much as someone might keep a journal. Some of those experiences and questions became songs, recorded as demos and stored away in a cardboard box. They remained there for more than twenty years, while the songwriter moved into another chapter of his life.

Now based in Columbia, Missouri, Shon Aguero has returned to that collection, recovering the original recordings and beginning the work of finishing them. It’s an unusual way to reintroduce a body of work and by not assembling a conventional album campaign or deciding which songs should lead the way, Shon is completing the demos individually and sharing them as they’re ready. The order is determined by the practical process of bringing each recording to completion, not by the usual calculations of a release strategy.

New live instrumentation, vocals and modern production have been added but the underlying compositions remain based in what a younger Shon originally put down on tape, often alone and without any expectation that the songs would eventually find an audience. The six tracks on his EP titled Old Haunts, offer the first substantial look into that personal archive; written between 1999 and 2004, the songs reflect the uncertainties and questions he was working through at the time, particularly whether the person he was becoming would ever feel like enough.

Shon describes the EP as being about things that end, although the emotional context is not always immediately apparent. Revovling around country arrangements featuring fiddle and pedal steel, the songs often offer an inviting surface that conceals more complicated feelings and as he puts it, “most listeners will hear a good time before they hear the grief underneath.” The six tracks move through different perspectives on leaving, memory, judgement and self-understanding.

Opening with “Then Again,” the EP begins with a thought that neatly captures its wider concerns, “Leaving is easy to start and hard to finish.” “Maria” looks back towards a golden memory of someone loved, alongside the hope of finding that particular magic again while on “Hwy 59 Walking Man,” Shon follows a stranger travelling a difficult road under the judgement of an entire town, while also acknowledging his own involvement in that judgement.

“Words You Say” turns towards the advice offered by people who remain behind and the way their words can continue to shape someone long after they’ve moved on. “How I Need You” initially resembles a straightforward love song but Shon notes its deeper purpose as self-reflection, with the idea of need presented as a confession. Closing track “Boneyard” takes a more expansive view, using the figure of a cowboy to consider the smallness of individual lives and the importance of finding joy in the time available.

The recordings were completed at Whisper Court Studio in the spring, with Shon listed as the sole contributor across the process, from songwriting through to mastering. That complete involvement connects the finished EP to the independent spirit of the original demos, preserving the personal nature of the material while allowing it to reach listeners in a new form. Old Haunts presents a record of a younger songwriter meeting the person he’s since become, with more than two decades separating the original ideas from their finished recordings. With new song ideas still being written down every day, Shon Aguero’s return to music is an ongoing process with plenty of stories still to come.

Commenting on the release, Shon Aguero shares, “It took me 25 years to realise that everything I was writing as a young man was about loss. Coming of age and learning that everything ends is a particularly hard lesson. These songs helped me work it out.”

Listen to Old Haunts below