| news | timeline | tour dates | tour diary | band info | recordings | on the web |
| archives | interviews | media |
|
Michael Harris, Belfast, 2008 09 26 (it was a rainy autumn day in Belfast, but it was warm in that chinese restaurant across Auntie Annie's where we sat after the gig to talk with Michael Harris, the man who, among many other things, pushes the faders during Jubilee's concerts. So we sipped some jasmine tea, and some more, while all the irish people around were getting increasingly drunk and tone-deaf. As always, we had a lot to ask, and Harris had a lot to say, so the interview started taking homeric proportions.. what you get here is probably the first third of it, where Harris talks about his personal background and how he got into working with Jubilee, his taste in production, and how the second EP got to see the light of day. So sit tight and enjoy, the rest is coming soon.) isolate by the hour - Please introduce yourself : who are you and what do you do in Jubilee ? michael harris - My full name is Michael Lawrence Harris ibth - How should we call you ? harris - Michael Harris is fine.. Michael is fine.. Harris is fine, too. ibth - Can you tell us where we are exactly, and what's been going on ? harris - We're in Belfast.. we had quite a drive yesterday, we started in London, after we played the night before, and yesterday we kind of hung out, and went to Abbey Road, and it was really nice and exciting, and afterwards we went to Alan Moulder's, talked to him for a while, went to his studio, Flood's studio, upstairs, that was exciting, and hung out with Ian Brown a little bit, which was very cool..and then we got into the car around maybe 8, 8:30 and drove all the way to Holyhead.. ibth - ..to get a horriby early or late ferry.. harris - Horribly early probably is better.. 2:30.. And then we took the ferry to Dublin.. i think we arrived at 5:45, and then we drove some more to Belfast.. ibth - For a night like that you come across fairly awake and fresh. harris - Oh, i am. Even if i got only 4 hours of sleep, and i did sleep in the van. ibth - What's the secret then ? harris : Ehhh..I don't know, i feel i can run on very little sleep.. I feel like i have a lot of energy all the time, i don't really know why.. I feel like if i sleep in certain increments, i tend to be able to be awake for really long periods of time, i don't know. I also drink a lot of coffee. A LOT of coffee. ibth - Was today better than the night ? harris - Oh yeah, we had a great day, i saw the sun rise driving up the M1 from Dublin. It was beautiful. The mist was really thick, but the light was coming through so it was really picturesque and really beautiful, and we drove up and got a hotel.. And we played here in Belfast, tonight, at Auntie Annie's Porterhouse.. looks like a very cool bar, i'm excited to go downstairs and sit around for a while..  ibth - So.. what do you do in Jubilee ? harris - I.. I do a lot of things in Jubilee.. i've done all the recordings so far besides the tidbits of demos Aaron and Mike did before i was around, when i was in college. I've been recording with them for, i guess, probaby a year.. a little over a year now, a year and a month or so.. So i do their recordings, i do their live sound, i drive their van, along with Troy, and i sell merch, and i pseudo "tour manage." I guess that's my obligations.. front of house, monitor engineer, merch jockey, band driver, tour manager.. ibth - What exactly is your background, you said you've been to college ? Did you get into sound engineering by then already, or.. ? harris - When i was in college .. i guess it's probaby better to start a bit further back. I was very into visual arts when i was a younger kid, when i was in middle of high school. And i didn't lose interest in it, but i gained more interests i'd say, and got more into viewing it than doing it.. so i kinda left that behind, and i went to college for music and i didn't have a defined major, and so i decided i'm gonna do music. I've played piano since i was a little kid, maybe 8 or 9..also, when i was 12 or 13 i started playing guitar. So i've had kind of a musical background, throughout my life and everything. I have listened to music for my whole life.. ibth - Did you do the whole thing academically, did you take piano or guitar lessons and everything ? harris - Yeah, i took piano lessons..with.. my stepather now, Which is kinda funny. He was my piano instructor, and then when my parents divorced, he and my mother married. And now he doesn't teach me piano lessons anymore but he did it for 4 or 5 years. ibth - But probaby the lessons woud be for free now harris - That's right, probably. In fact they have been. Some times i've sat with him, and he showed me some stuff. But yeah, i still play piano everytime i can and i love that. I'm first a musician and then secondarily recording engineer i'd say. ibth - Do you prefer the piano or the guitar ? harris - It depends on the time in my life. I went through a on period in college in which all i listened to was pretty much classical music.. ibth - What sort of classical music ? harris - All sorts.. starting way back.. Gregorian chants, all of the early medieval pre-Renaissance musicians, and then into the Renaissance, listening to some of that, and then the baroque period, of course Bach and all of those, Haendel, everybody. And then moving on, Haydn, Mozart, all of the greats.. Beethoven.. But what really held my attention was the romantic period. I'm still absolutely fascinated by romantic classical music. It's probaby my favourite classical music. ibth - While you're talkin about classical music.. there was that post on the Shabbey Road myspace, in april last year ? it was titled "What i do everyday" and i think i know that from somewhere and that shoud be Eric Satie, right ? harris - Oh, i'm glad you caught that, it was Eric Satie, yeah.. ibth - Was that you ? harris - That was me, yeah.. poking fun at myself, and kind of our daily routines, and just everything we do..It's basically Eric Satie who was a jokster at heart as well as a musician and you can hear it in all of his music. Eric Satie, for those who don't know, is kind of a twentieth century musician who wrote lots of short pieces, almost exclusively for the piano. Not all of them, but a lot for piano, and i learnt a bunch of them in college and everything.. i was fascinated by him as a person. If anyone's seen the movie.. have you guys seen Un Chien Andalou ? The Bunuel movie ? he's featured in there with Dali i believe, and he's jumping on a trampoline in his grey suit. A great story i've heard about him was that he used to walk around in a grey suit and he had about five or six grey suits. He wore nothing else and that was his whole entire amount of clothing, and.. anyway he wrote a number of little shorts and that was one of them, and i thought : you know, we go to the studio everyday, and we do the same kind of thing. It's always a bit different but we have kind of a regimented schedule and i thought it would be funny if peope read that, and they'd see that kind of irony and the parallels, you know.. ibth - But now you're working into rock music or popular music, is there any pop music, or.. easier non classical music that you dig ? harris - Oh yeah, i will say this : i love classical music, in some senses it's my favourite music to listen to, but at the same time, you know, rock music and popular music, is here. In my heart. And it's hard to avoid that. ibth - What sort of music woud you be into in that field, rock or pop ? harris - Oh god. Popular music now, or popular music thirty years ago ? ibth - Rock'n'roll history, whatever.. harris - Oh my favourite groups are probaby from back then, i guess, the Beatles, Neil Young.. I find i kind of like music that's moodier, maybe not as frontal. But i say that and then two of my favourite bands are Fugazi and Shellac, so i don't know exactly how my mind is working, i've tried to wrap my head around it, my head around my own mind, (laughs) but i can't quite do it, i don't know.. Those are some, and Creedence, and just all of those things that have a lot of soul, i guess. ibth - You've been mentioning you got recording with Jubilee one year and one month ago, roughly. How did you get involved in the whole thing ? harris That's an interesting scenario.. I've known Jeff since i was a kid in junior high.. maybe since when i was 11 or 12. We talked for a while in junior high, we kind of got to know each other and then in early high school we started a band together called The Socials which recorded exactly four songs. ibth - The Socials or The Socialists ? harris - No, The Socials.. we didn't have any political agenda. We started this band and it was kinda weird psychedelic rock .. At The Drive-In, Jane's Addiction .. we wore our influences on our sleeve, to say the least. It was very fun, my twin brother singing, and with very good friends of mine playing drums and bass. So we got to know each other really well and we hung out literally 20 hours out of 24 and pretty much everyday. ibth - And did you get involved with Jubilee when Jeff got involved with Jubilee ? harris - No, that happened at a different time. I came back from college and Wires On Fire, Jeff and Mike's other band, asked me to start recording their new record cause they just didn't have a budget, so i was like "listen i'm gonna do it", because i just wanted to. ibth - What was your first impression when you heard Jubilee's material ? The first time ? harris - My first impression was a few songs that i really.. you know how it is when you hear songs.. you don't know how to judge it really.. and i heard the demos and the demos had a certain kind of quality, but maybe not what i would want them to have, and certain things obviously, like Troy drumming on them.. And i'm constantly.. just a real quick diversion from what we're saying. I'm constantly amazed by the way his character of playing comes out regardless of how it's recorded. Regardless. Because for instance "L.A." on the first release, and for example "Pioneers.." on the second release, it's so him, it doesn't matter who's recorded, it's him, it comes through... Anyhoo, i really liked it, i didn't realize its full potential, and i think i'm realizing that more and more everyday, but i really really loved it, and some of the songs that i heard, i was really astonished. Because i thought to myself.. most popular music bores me, even one listening doesn't get me involved at all. But this stuff did, it got me involved, even at first listening, which is again, rare, so that was my first thought. And also the fact there was no incarnation of anything yet.There was no thought of Jubilee the name, there was no thought of who the players were, there was just Mike and Aaron writing these songs, and Troy, and they had these songs and they wanted to record them. ibth - So, just to sum it up, they were having these demos and then you arrive in the game and then you help them record them more "professionally" ? harris - You know it's funny, saying that and being here on tour, and thinking of myself as a recording engineer and just as a sound engineer. And thinking to myself, you always think, that you do the best you can whenever you can, but i don't necessary even believe to myself that the recordings that they have are more professional than could be accomplished anywhere else. I hear Aaron's demos, and i see that there's a fidelity loss, maybe, but i don't think that those can't be released. I mean for example "Pioneers..", some of it is me recording it, but some of it is him. So the area is very grey as to what's professional.. ibth - What are you trying to add to the sound, from these demos to what you do with them.. what sort of sound are you after ? harris - I'm constanty trying to figure that out. But i do know that there's a clarity that can be brought up to the music and a fidelity that really sheds light. I've always been one to really play particular attention to detail, especially in music and in any kind of art. And i'm a very modest person to say that though i have a conviction. In any song there's a little part that happens here or there and it sticks out, my brother and i woud just gush over, over it.. |
|
Jubilee (ju.bi.lee), n. : 1. A rock'n'roll band from L.A., Ca., currently composed of Aaron North (vocals, guitar), Tony Bevilacqua (guitar, vocals), Jenni Tarma (bass), Troy Petrey (drums.)2. Jubilation; rejoicing. 3. A season or an occasion of joyful celebration. 4.a. A specially celebrated anniversary. b. The celebration of such an anniversary. |
|
isolate by the hour homeabout us contact |
|
Jubilee on vimeo |
 get In With The Out Crowd from Jubilee's Digital Music Store |
 check out Rebel Hisson Jubilee's Digital Music Store |