Musician Mic Harrison returns to ‘a little country ... a little rocking’
When it comes to describing his music, Mic Harrison has heard people use every of kind of name and every kind of tag: alt-country, y’allternative, cowpunk, and on and on.
“I’ve never been a big fan of any label, or any of those sublabels,” says the Knoxville-based Harrison, “But they gotta have them, I guess.”
Mic Harrison and his latest band venture, the High Score, hit the road and crank out well-received albums.
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Whatever you call his particular brand of roots-fueled rock, Harrison and his band, The High Score, will be playing Memphis, with a show at the Poplar Lounge on Saturday.
Harrison’s first big break came in the early ’90s, when he replaced musician John Paul Keith (now of the Memphis group the One Four Fives) in the fast-rising Knoxville band the V-Roys. “When I joined the V-Roys, I didn’t have a whole lot of experience in bands — at least good bands — and I didn’t realize that we were clicking so well and that we had such good chemistry,” says Harrison.
The white-hot group was snatched up by singer Steve Earle’s E-Squared label and recorded two critically acclaimed studio LPs and a live album before splitting up in 1999.
After the V-Roys split, Harrison signed on to play guitar with Knoxville pop purveyors Superdrag for several years, before going on to front a similarly pop-flavored band called the Faults.
“After the V-Roys I went through this whole pop phase,” says Harrison. “I was in the mood to play some power-pop — that was the kind of songs I was writing so I went with that.”
“Honestly, though, that’s where I kinda (messed) up a little bit,” he says. “I think I turned some folks off. But now I’ve come back around to what I guess I should’ve been doing to begin with, which is a little country, but also a little rocking. I’m back to the V-Roys sound.”
Helping Harrison capture that sound is his current band, the High Score — guitarist Robbie Trosper, drummer Brad Henderson and bassist Vance Hillard. “This band I have right now is the best chemistry I’ve had since the V-Roys for sure,” says Harrison. “I guess we just found each other hanging out more than we did playing and we realized, ‘Wow, this is really clicking.’ ”
Since last appearing in the Bluff City in 2006, Harrison has been busy turning out two new studio LPs with the High Score: 2007’s Push Me on Home and 2008’s On the Right Side of the Grass. Funding and supporting multiple projects as an independent artist has its challenges; for example, skyrocketing gas prices kept Harrison and his band off the road for much of 2008.
“With the last album, we wanted to experiment to see, ‘Can we do this? Can we put a record out a year?’ And after that little experiment, I don’t think we can,” says Harrison, laughing. “It’s just too much.”
Still that won’t dissuade Harrison, who’s at work on songs for a new record he’s planning to record and release early next year.
When the next album does come out, Harrison says whatever genre tag games fans and critics play will be fine with him. “Yeah, really, it doesn’t matter what people call the music,” he says, “as long as they like what they hear.”
Mic Harrison and The High Score, with The Gurley Show
10 p.m. Saturday at the Poplar Lounge, 2586 Poplar Avenue. Cover is $5. For more information, call 324-1233.
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