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Q&A: North Elementary's John Harrison

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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?

JH: That’s a good question actually. Things definitely change, especially lyrically, when you’re singing a song night after night. That can definitely take on a different meaning over time. Even song titles or album titles, but in a way that’s kind of nice.

I tend to think of our albums or songs as, “Well, this is what’s happening now.” And if I think back to, say, an album we released a while ago called Lose Your Favorite Things, I think of that group of people, that time period in my life, and it sort of documents that.

Dive: What’s your connection to the girl on the cover of Southern Rescue Trails?

JH: That’s actually my fiancé — I’m getting married April 30. I had a whole other cover picked out, but then our keyboard player Betty [Rupp] took some pictures at a dance party that we had at our house after a show we had at the Local 506. I saw that picture and thought it was awesome.
I would say the record is specifically about her, but it is about me growing up in the South and falling in love with a person. So it tied into the general theme of getting back in touch with enjoying having been raised in the South. So the journey of rediscovering that and finding somebody that you maybe want to spend your life with.

The thing with the record — Southern Rescue Trails — we’re kind of country, but I didn’t want tractors or fields. I wanted the words to be looked at out of context, which I think makes it work a lot better for me, as far as the title of the record placed with that picture.

Dive: Are you familiar with The Big Picture? They’re doing something similar to what you did for Southern Rescue Trails by releasing videos directed by different people in the community to promote an upcoming album. Is the Triangle going to have a music video comeback?

JH: Yes, we covered a song of theirs …. It’s not necessarily a comeback — I just think it’s where we’re at.

It’s just as easy online to download or stream an MP3 as it is to do a video. I think it’s just where technology stands.

Dive: So it speaks more to the Triangle’s collaborative nature — artists working together?

JH: Yeah, if there’s anything to talk about with that kind of stuff, it’s — yeah, the artists who made the videos, the process behind how something like that happened.

Generally, these days, before a record comes out you can stream it, and my idea was, why not stream it with a video?

It can’t happen everywhere, but in this town, it’s just wonderful. Everybody is so supportive and so helpful and so eager to be creative with all their heart. I’ve lived here for 12 years and it’s really magical. It’s not like that other places.

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