Meet Joel Harris: Musician

We had the good fortune of connecting with Joel Harris and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Joel, what are you inspired by?
When it comes to making music, I look for inspiration from anything that creates an experience of Stillness. Usually I find this inspiration in nature or landscapes, but sometimes in relationships, memory, or color. The composer Arvo Part asked once, “how can one fill the stillness with notes that are worthy of this silence?” The longer I work on writing songs, recording sounds, singing melodies, the more I feel that to do any of those things is at the cost of silence. Silence can say a great deal – about myself, the world, other people – before I even begin speaking, or making sounds. I spent time near both the ocean and the desert as a young person, and both brought the embodied experience of being still. Though one seems like contained chaos, and the other stark empty space, I have always mentally worked toward those spaces when writing music. The awareness of myself as a body in relationship to these spaces, felt like a cathedral for the hum in my brain. Like every other 21st century person, from the moment my eyes open, my life is filled with noise. Only sometimes is it auditory, it could be a device, a headline, or a person. Life sometimes feels to me like an experiment in just how many signals my receiver can take, before I just stop listening. And when I stop listening, my ability to be present gives way to becoming a passenger in my own life. With music, I try to ask myself, does this bring me and the listener nearer internal stillness – where I can hear myself, the world, and others more clearly? In silence I remember where I resonate with the world, or the voices within me that I may be ignoring. But it also helps me respect the songs that are already being sung. Author Peter Bouteneff says “in order for air in motion (vibrations) to be called “sound”, it requires a hearer.” As soon as my eyes open, a symphony is already being played: the valley is full of birdsong, beating rain, passing trucks – sounds that exist because I as the listener am there to receive them. As I try to create music from a posture of respecting silence, I have hope that the signals I’m sending to an already overcrowded receiver (ear), can be small signposts pointing towards Stillness.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
It has taken me a long time to get to a place where I’m willing to put the work into making music. Growing up I thought you really only got to be a “creative” if you were the most talented person in the room, and that any art making outside of that just had to be a hobby. Pretty quickly I figured out I wasn’t that person, so music was relegated to the basement of priorities. But music is the thing in my life that has never gone away or worn off. So one of my biggest challenges has been putting aside the voice that says it doesn’t deserve to be prioritized. I think part of finding your artistic identity, is weighing up the things that you come back to over and over again that you want to express about or for yourself, and identifying where those things can be a gift to others. I think it was the writer Douglas Coupland who said that what we do just for ourselves, often comes back smaller somehow. For as long as I am making music, I’m hopeful that I can create things that bring calm, comfort, and connection – because I want those things for myself as well.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I would definitely take them up the Tennessee River Valley, and certain places on the Hiwassee River. Being up there in the early morning is amazing. I also love Chattanooga’s Sculpture Park and the Aquarium as places to spend an afternoon with friends or on your own. Yellow Racket Record store is also not to be missed. If I’m going to eat at one place it would be Chatt Smokehouse.Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are so many people I could point to, but concerning music, two people that come to mind immediately. The first was a guitar teacher I had in high school named Linda Bailey. I struggled for years with the structure of music when I was a kid, feeling like I just could not grasp the theory. But she helped me find joy in musical expression, a way to express my own personality through it, and tools that I could use on that path. She was very selfless, and was not as interested in making her students successful as she was in making them feel seen. The other is my friend Ben Vanderhart. He runs the label (Yellow Racket Records) I release my music through, a record store by the same name, and has been a fan of my music even when I didn’t think it was worthwhile. He’s an incredibly selfless guy, and been so generous with his time, skill, and critique.

Website: https://www.yellowracket.com/joel-harris

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joelharrismusic/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/joelharrismusic

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/officialjoelharris/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=IUDNyVMQiUU&feature=emb_title