What he wanted was a long life in this ruined world. A long life—with music.
He stared up at the gray smoke as it spread across the night. Whispering: “And I never saw my love again…”
EPILOGUE:
CERTAIN SONGS
Melody Press Magazine, November issue (cover story)
A ROCK LEGEND IN THE MAKING
by Lila Kendall
At first glance he’s just another face in the New York crowd, someone you wouldn’t notice unless you were seeking him out. In less than an hour, though, Clay Harper will be on stage at Town Hall, in front of a sold-out crowd hanging on his every note and turn of phrase. Yet, at a pub less than two blocks from where his fans congregate, you wouldn’t know Harper has anywhere to go. “Right now I have this beer and Austin City Limits on TV and our conversation,” the singer/songwriter says, brushing his shoulder-length hair from his face. “The show’s going to be a blast, I’ll give the crowd everything I’ve got, but when it comes down to it, right now is all we have.”
In the five years since the release of his debut album, Rise, Harper has accumulated a series of memorable moments, musical and otherwise. His ambient, emotionally wrought tracks have drawn praise from the hallowed likes of Springsteen and Dylan, he has toured with The Arcade Fire, Bright Eyes, The Blackheart Procession, and at last year’s South by Southwest Festival he managed to assemble a backing band that included no less than Dave Grohl, Kim Deal, and Tom Morello. What’s most impressive is that Harper has achieved this adoration about as single-handedly as any one man can. “When I set out, I started with a stool and an acoustic guitar,” Harper recalls. “I thought it would be fun to write ten songs and travel the country with them.” Living out of his Jeep, Harper ventured anywhere that would have him. “I played bars, galleries, libraries, laundromats, literal holes in the wall. One time I appeared in the bathroom at Carnegie Hall. That was fun. I jammed for twenty minutes before security kicked me out.”
It wasn’t long before the music world took note. Harper became an internet and college radio sensation, the worst-kept secret on the indie music scene. “His songs reach out to you,” says John Maynard, a Melody critic who has attended Harper’s shows since his days with Farewell Ghost. “You can’t walk by a radio playing Clay Harper and not ask who he is.”
Harper writes songs like poignant parables, about everyday people struggling with the world around them, people searching for redemption and peace of mind, clarity and love, people resisting the urge to surrender to acts of greed and violence and self-destruction. They are anthems that edify their listener in the way that great music always has. If the old industry adage is that “true talent only gets discovered every ten years,” Harper might have set everyone else back a decade.
Record companies of all sizes have approached him at one time or another. But Harper declined all offers except one, at Throttle Up! Records, an upstart label created by a pair of musicians out of Lincoln, Nebraska. “I signed with those guys because they know more about music than anyone I’ve ever met. And they didn’t want to do anything with my career except release the songs I wrote.”
Despite having complete control over his music and touring schedule, the one detail Harper has not been able to manage are the sizes of the venues he plays. After his first tramp around the country, he had fallen in love with the small club scene, places that a hundred people could fill to the busting point. That changed, however, one night in Philadelphia. “I was playing my old hometown, at this coffeehouse in a mini-mall,” Harper tells me. “The place filled up and some angry fans busted into the hardware place next door and used drills to make eye- and earholes for themselves.” Reluctantly Harper began to return booker calls from the Electric Factories and Paramount Theatres of the world. “More and more people were showing up to the party. It’s flattering. Popularity is a good problem to have.”
Indeed, as anyone who has ever Googled Harper’s name will know, popularity was a problem he could have had a lot more of. Another of modern music’s worst-kept secrets is that Harper was a founding member of the hard-hitting Farewell Ghost who, as fate would have it, are playing the first of two sold-out shows tonight at Madison Square Garden. Many have speculated that Harper wrote most of the tracks off Ghost’s debut, a question he has long sidestepped.
When asked if he regrets anything about those early days, Harper throws on a smile. “I think we all have regrets about how things played out. There are times when I wonder what twenty-thousand screaming fans sound like, but you know, several hundred strangers who love you isn’t exactly obscurity. I wouldn’t change where I’m at for anything.”
Although Ghost singer/guitarist Savy Marquez has admitted that she and Harper were once in a relationship, and that it was a contributing factor to the dream quartet’s end, Harper himself remains mum, leaving the rest of us to ponder what their offspring might have looked—and sounded—like.
Still, you can’t help but feel a certain chill when the subject is raised. Did a Harper-fronted Farewell Ghost really practice in the room where their idol Rocco Boyle died? Was that rehearsal space really burned to the ground by a disgruntled and—as of yet—unidentified fan? With so much rock history at stake, it has been impossible for Harper or Marquez to avoid their shared history.
Clearly neither enjoys the scrutiny, but if they agree on anything it’s that some things are best left in the past. Don’t expect to find Savy Marquez standing at the back of a Clay Harper show, and Harper won’t be appearing on stage with Ghost
