Harper Simon Delves Into His Own Musical Odyssey (INTERVIEW)

When your first album comes out of the barrel and receives very good reviews, it can be very exciting … and then quite stressful when you start thinking about making another one. But for Harper Simon, he didn’t exactly fall under the sophomore spell as some other newbies might have. If anything, it would have been his first tome to make him a nervous nelly – since his father, Paul Simon, is one of our greatest songwriters – but since music has always been a part of his world, it was more natural to put his voice to a tape machine and let the words fly.

Simon has an almost angelic voice, albeit with a slightly jagged edge. He doesn’t slice you with a cutting wit but instead sprinkles you with quirky anecdotes about his life, your life, your best friend’s life and the girl riding her bicycle down a country road swathed in a warm dusky sunshine. Nobody is perfect in his world but the imperfections are more lovable than grotesque. And this is what Harper Simon does best: capturing a youthful spirit, idiosyncrasies acknowledged and celebrated.

Calling into Glide to talk about his second album, Division Street, Simon has a freshness to his personality and an unassuming je ne sais quoi that makes him immediately likable. A lot like his latest recording.

How would you describe your new album?

Well, the album kind of goes all over the place. It’s got a couple of acoustic-driven songs but it’s largely driven by my electric guitar playing, and Pete Thomas from Elvis Costello’s Attractions on the drums is on every song. And many other great players guesting on different songs. But it’s closer to a more New York kind of rock & roll record that I grew up listening to. It’s not as folky or rootsy as the last one probably.

You’re rocking out a little bit more

Yeah, it felt like time to be that for a minute before I go off and do something else tomorrow (laughs). But yeah, I’ve always kind of had two sides to me. I mean, not so dissimilar to someone like Neil Young, you know, who could make an acoustic record like Harvest and then do something real loud with Crazy Horse the next year or something. I have those sides of me that like to play electric guitars and this is that side of me.

harpersimoncdnewYou worked with Tom Rothrock again. What does he help bring out in you or your music that you wanted to work with again?

Well, on the first one he just came on at the very end and mixed the record so I didn’t build that record up with him. But I enjoyed working with him a lot in the mixing process so it made sense when it was time to make another record, I just called him up to see if he might want to do a whole one with me, produce one with me. So on this one, me and Tom were really the architects of the album’s production. It was a different experience for sure.

How so?

Just that we built a whole record together as opposed to him coming on for three weeks at the end and mixing a record that I had done myself or done with Bob Johnston.

How long did it take to make this record?

It took over a year. The first chunk of it was a bunch of production and some of those songs got recut again and I went away in the middle for three or four months to work on the lyrics. That took longer than I expected. Then I came back and did another chunk of recording with Pete Thomas and Nikolai Fraiture from the The Strokes and Jon Brion and Benmont Tench from the Heartbreakers; different people came on on the second half of it. It kind of went in stages over a year.

You said you worked with Benmont Tench, who is Tom Petty’s keyboard player. How did that come about?

Well, I had played with Benmont a lot at Largo here in Los Angeles and that’s a good ole community of players and I did a couple of residencies there. I was playing around there a lot and I got to know Benmont. He played with me in my band on the Jimmy Kimmel show. So yeah, you know, we’re friends and we had played together so I asked him to come and play on the record and he played on a couple of songs. He’s the greatest.

Did you really write the chunk of your lyrics at a library?

Yeah, I did. I went to libraries a lot to write. I just like getting out. I don’t have an office or anything so I just kind of liked going somewhere to write, like out of my house. I don’t have a rehearsal space, and I wouldn’t want to write there anyway, but there is something nice about going to the library where everyone is working and I just like libraries. It’s quiet and I can focus and there are lots of reference books and I could sort of be imaginative in there and kind of follow my instincts and have a chunk of time just devoted to writing and editing words. I just got in the habit of doing it and I enjoyed it so I stuck with it.

harpersimonindex2

Are you going to tour with this album?

I hope so. I don’t have anything set up right now. But yeah, I want to tour to some degree for sure.

Do you like touring or do you prefer residencies at certain clubs?

No, I like touring. I mean, it depends on how well it goes or who I get to open for or work with. It just depends on a bunch of things in order for it to be fun. It can be hard to be away from your friends and your social life. I’ve never toured in any kind of fancy way so it can be a little bit grueling but I do like some things about it for sure.

How do you create a song?

I usually come up with a song on a guitar first. I come up with the structure, the changes, and I usually come up with a melody first. Somewhere out of that melody might come some phrase or hook or something that sparks another idea. Sometimes I’ll just put in place-keeper lyrics just to hold the melody in place and then I’ll slowly replace them with better writing and let the song’s meaning reveal itself to me usually.

Do you think you’re a poet at heart more than a songwriter?

I do like poetic language used in lyrics when it’s done well. That’s a different medium, really, but I think when successful writers figure out how to incorporate poetic language into songs, I think it can be great. But I also like “Be-Bop-A-Lula.”

So what was the most unique thing that inspired you to write a song?

It’s hard for me to say because most songs are sort of a composite of just experiences and different people in my life and there are so many inside references for me. They’re rarely that cohesive. They often might have a specific friend in mind but it might have two or three, but it’s kind of made into a composite character. Or I might be referring to myself or I might be referring to another song lyric, another person’s song. It’s like having a dialogue as I go down from line to line. Everything comes from somewhere: maybe a book, an experience, maybe from a friend, maybe from something I heard or a line in a film or a line in a song. So it’s hard for me to break it down to like one unique experience, you know what I mean.

When you did the first album and you got all this praise, did it put any extra pressure on you when you started to make the new album? Or had there been enough time in between that you weren’t even worried about it anymore?

Well, I didn’t feel like it got so many accolades (laughs). In my mind it wasn’t, it did get good reviews and there was some good press but I didn’t feel like it made a real impact in the culture or anything or that too many people were going to be waiting around for my second record necessarily. But I don’t know, I might have had a distorted perception of it. But yeah, I felt pressure. You have to feel pressure to put anything out in the world when it’s got your name on it, especially if you’re right at the center of the project and you’re going to carry it yourself. You know, making a solo album is not so dissimilar to writing and directing and starring in your own movie or something. You’re really at the center of the creation, so that’s a very vulnerable place to be and there’s a certain amount of intrinsic pressure to that situation.

I know quite a few people around here that really enjoyed your first album.

Oh, that’s great to hear. I hope I get to come down this year and play in New Orleans. I love New Orleans so much and you know what, New Orleans R&B from the sixties was a big influence for me. Allen Toussaint and Ernie K. Doe, Irma Thomas, all those New Orleans productions from the sixties. I listen to that a lot and always have for years and years. You should put that in the article because I really love that.

Who else did you listen to when you were younger?

Well, it would have been totally different kinds of people at different stages. With this record, I guess I was more thinking about like some psychedelic, like Love and the Velvet Underground and the Rolling Stones and maybe Television in there a little bit. Bands like that, The Who or X. I like to listen to so many different kinds, but that is what comes to mind when I think about this record.

So what do you want to do next?

I want to make another couple of albums in a row. I’ll make another album or two and I do want to keep doing that. But I’m not sure what my next move will be with who I collaborate with or what the direction the next record will be, cause I just finished this one (laughs). But I do want to do that and I do want to do other things. I do maybe want to get more involved in the film and television world hopefully. There are a bunch of different things I want to do but I definitely want to make another record. It takes a long time for me. I don’t make them quickly. Hopefully, I’ll make the next one a little bit faster and get it out a little bit faster.

[youtube id=”pBKoFyz6c14″ width=”630″ height=”350″]

Related Content

One Response

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

New to Glide

Keep up-to-date with Glide

Twitter