North Elementary is touring in support of its sixth album. At a point where most bands fall apart or change direction, North Elementary shows no signs of stopping its brand of experimental folk pop. This week, Assistant Editor Joseph Chapman caught up with frontman John Harrison.
Diversions: So you finally released Southern Rescue Trails back in September — how has the album held up live?
John Harrison: It’s been fun. Those songs — a lot of them were written with the touring band that I’ve had for the last three years. I felt like we really played well together, and I think that record was mostly tracked live with the whole band.
I think it’s a band-sounding record that lends its songs to work live. We built in spaces in the songs so we could be more in the moment and change night to night.
Dive: When you were recording in the studio, did you ever have to backup and say, “Wait — we can’t do this part live?”
JH: We had to change up some of the songs. I personally view recording and playing live as two different things — and I love doing both.
We play close to 100 shows a year and I also like going to the studios and recording and having the freedom to do stuff you can’t do live.
Me, personally, I don’t think that when you record something it has to sound like that live when you play it. If I was Coldplay, I’d probably need to do that, but the clubs we play at and the amount of records that sell, I think it’s more important to just sort of do things that we find interesting in both mediums.
Dive: Has the meaning of any song, or even the album itself, changed for you after taking it out of the studio and playing it live?