DJ Harry
TURNING THE TABLES

Telluride is a magical place. It pours telluric currents skyward, culminating in those famous jagged peaks. For many, it can be a little heady; dizzying, even. For those able to yoke the tide and put it to good use, Telluride can be a place of inspiration, a place to take off and run with newfound energy."

by Ben Williams

For DJ Harry, Telluride has been such a runway. Leaving college to start up a music career, this one-time Telluride local is now blasting into the national music scene with his new album, Collision.

Let’s look back first. Every story has a beginning and Harry isn’t your average DJ. His music experience began at an early age. Before he was born, he listened to great ragtime artists. His mother was a piano teacher in Sedalia, Missouri, and Harry grew up about 10 blocks from where Scott Joplin’s famous Maple Leaf Rag was written. Music was his life.

“I grew up in the crib next to my Mom giving piano lessons,” he says, “Music is in my genes!”

Harry plays music and expresses those inner-feelings that make us uniquely human. He started young on the piano and guitar. He is classically trained. This is helpful when pairing rhythms, mixing beats or sampling new sounds into a tuneful arrangement. There is great art in assimilating sounds and firing them off on point and in tune. There is also a tendency in modern times to belittle electronic music. “They don’t play their instruments”...but the art is still there. And like any art, learning the theory to better describe the medium only enhances natural ability. As any scratch master can attest, there is an art to handling the decks. In many ways, they are an instrument in their own right; a different instrument, a digital collage; a symphony in the hands of a conductor.

Harry developed his ear through his formative years, growing up alongside his Mom listening to Scott Joplin. He followed the score his whole life and was a music major at college. Like many young Americans he dreamed of forming a band. In San Francisco, he saw the Grateful Dead and became aware of the experimental music scene, but something else pulled him in; something new, something definitive of the 90s. It was a “rave,” called A Rave Called Sharon in a warehouse, an underground gig, when the movement was still fresh—house music rocked down the house with those soaring breaks and he knew immediately he was in his element. “Right then and there, I knew I was going to be a DJ,” he says.

He moved back to the Midwest to finish college. In 1993 a friend pulled him to Telluride and he started mixing. He got the knack pretty quickly, and soon was driving to Phoenix and St. Louis to spin. House music was new. “I got into the rave circuit really early,” he says, “[spinning] at big raves—warehouse break-in parties. It was totally illegal, but a whole new identity. A very pure experience.”

But he always came back to Telluride, his “home base,” his “spiritual home.”

“There’s a lot of energy in Telluride. I felt the same energy I had felt in San Francisco. I live life by a flow of energy…not what it is, but how it feels.” He started spinning shows at the Fly Me to the Moon Saloon on Thursdays, diluting the mix with disco to start with (house and techno were still avant garde) and drifting into full-on house as the evenings progressed. The crowds didn’t necessary know what they were getting into.“All they knew is they were having a good time,” he says. “Telluride is very cool. It was just like being in the city, only without the mess.”

From 1994-99, Harry began a mountain circuit that many would envy. Vail, Crested Butte, Telluride and Durango, at least four nights a week in four different ski towns.
Most of his records were bought from overseas where the rave movement had already exploded. Harry complemented his able, agile ear and screaming fingers with the most upfront tunes the world had to offer. “It was the wildest party I’ve ever experienced,” he laughs. “House was new, I was the messenger for the new movement—the house nation! There was no competition in these mountain towns, it was the purest!”

His big break came in 2000, when he was offered to play a gig with The String Cheese Incident. He remixed a couple of their songs into house, noting the similar energy between “jam bands and house music.” The String Cheese Remix Project was a success—sci-fidelity, String Cheese’s label, loved the remix, signed Harry up and started distribution. Ten thousand copies sold. Harry started touring “at the next level,” the national underground music scene.

The tables had turned.

Then, in September of last year he released his new album, Collision. It was a hit. One track in particular got especial attention: All My Life was picked up by commercial radio. The album Collision leapt to number three on the college charts early this year and was ranked the third most added song to commercial rotations across the country. It is played approximately 250 times a week, all over the U.S.

Part of All My Life’s success is its commercial appeal. But that doesn’t mean it’s cheesy. Harry managed to synthesize what counts—avant garde sound with mainstream acceptance. Echoing beats and a rolling base overlay a mild, sliding guitar, with a smooth lyrical arrangement. Harry found a college girl, Lissie, in Fort Collins with a fantastic voice and produced her as a singer, arranged some of her material and wrote the musical accompaniment that became All My Life. (Watch our for Lissie in the future! A major record label is currently considering her…)

Since then Collision has been written up in major genre magazines URB, RELIX, BPM and XLR8R Harry’s been featured on CNN Radio and NPR.

“Now I’ll fly out for gigs for the weekend. Fly to New York.” Harry says. He recently returned from a 40 city tour opening for The New Deal, Particle, and of course The String Cheese Incident and participating in “jam cruise;” a cruise ship full of jam bands that leaves from Florida to the Bahamas and back in four days of constant music. “It’s a Carnival Cruise ship, which is a cross between Las Vegas, an airplane, and being in New Orleans. The party never stops,” Harry laughs.

So what’s he up to now? Aside from remix work for a lot of live acts, such as Michelle Shocked, Tortured Soul and Lotus, he’s putting out a 12-inch dance record and producing new, upcoming bands.

“The feeling expressed and transmitted on the dance floor Djing is the same feeling as walking down the street in Telluride—the same feeling I get getting off a plane to play a gig in New York—the same feeling I get working with new singer/songwriters. It’s all about the juice. The magic.”

All My life was first featured on Telluride Row, volume I, a compilation CD of singer/songwriters local to Telluride. Find DJ Harry again on Telluride Row, volume II, coming soon, and watch out for his gigs this summer around town. Check out www.djharry.net.

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