I have already written about Harper Simon’s debut album a month ago, but I want to come back to him since he has recorded a session on Daytrotter.com. After the first listening, the first impression is that the songs even have a more country flavor than on his album.
Why does a little guy from New York City is doing his first album the country way? Is he an opportunistic? After all, if most musical genres have seen their sales declined the last decade, country music did not follow that tendency since sales in country have increased. But Harper is anything but opportunistic, it is in his true nature for several reasons. First, Harper has said in many interviews that his mother is from real rural Tennessee, which totally gives him the right to explore this genre. Then his father has always been interested by experimenting with so many genres from Peruvian music with ‘El Condor Pasa’ as early as 1970, to reggae with ‘Mother and Child reunion’ in 1972, gospel with ‘Loves Me Like a Rock’ in 1973, of course South African music with the 1986 Grammy Award album ‘Graceland,’ Afro-Brazilian with the 1990 album ‘The Rhythm of the Saints,’ and Puerto Rican rhythms with ‘Songs From The Capeman’ in 1997. Despite this quite impressive diversity, Simon has never truly ventured in country music, that’s true, there was the Tex-Mex style song “All Around the World or The Myth of Fingerprints” on Graceland, but it was not truly country.
The crossing between the genres rock, pop and country is not new of course but it seems so natural and spontaneous in Harper’s case, ‘I didn’t even mean to do all this country stuff. It just kind of happened’ he said in an interview, and I believe him.
His cover of ‘Rudy’ (‘Rudy, A Message to You’), a 1967 ska/reggae song by the Jamaican musician Dandy Livingstone made famous by the Specials, has been almost completely stripped down from its reggae beat, it’s slow and sung with some kind of lethargy, but I don’t say that in a bad way. It’s warm and lazy like a happy sunny late afternoon. If his father had reggaefied some of his songs, his son dereggaefied (if such a term exists) this one!
On the album, ‘Whishes and stars,’ co-written with the poet and novelist Ben Okri, is a bouncing tune sung on a higher pitch and with beautiful harmonies over chords, whereas the Daytrotter version is much slower, stripped down to guitar, piano and especially pedal steel guitar which gives it its country atmosphere. It seems a totally different song, sung with more emphasis on Harper’s voice, or may be a different emphasis. It’s quite rare to witness this kind of transformation during a song rendition, as many artists tend to reproduce what they have recorded as much as possible.
The country treatment was also applied to ‘Berkeley girl’ in the Daytrotter session, with the same heavy use of the pedal steel guitar. Harper has said in interviews it was written for his friend and now manager Seven McDonald, daughter of Country Joe McDonald. Again the difference with the more acoustic album version is interesting and the song is really turned into a country song, the vocal harmonies at the end are gone and replaced by an upbeat solo of steel guitar that gives a totally different feeling to the song. It is executed with a determined and confident tone completely absent from the album version. And even if I prefer the extremely nostalgic original version (very ‘Dangling conversation’), I cannot blame him for trying something different.
The sleepy and extended version of ‘The Shine, a song written with the help of his father and Carrie Fisher, is sung so slowly that it becomes more solemn and tragic with the crying extended solo guitar at the end.
The session ends up with another cover, the interpretation of ‘See no Evil’ by Television although I am not sure why it is labeled ‘Evol’ in the Daytrotter player. It is an interesting and unexpected choice, with a long 2:25 minute instrumental introduction that could just be a left over from a Beck album. I said unexpected because, foolishly, I would not necessarily associate Harper Simon with post punk/new wave bands. However his rendition of the song is great, he makes this song his with extended guitar jam, and although he seems at this point quite far from the light, clear and youthful sound of his album, this piece adds tremendously to his range.
Harper ‘s father went to South Africa to find inspiration, Harper just went to Tennessee but at the end the process was similar, it was an adventure to build bridges between musical styles to find a way to honestly express who they are.