× JP Harris brings "Sometimes Dogs Bark at Nothing" to Europe starting next week

JP Harris brings "Sometimes Dogs Bark at Nothing" to Europe starting next week

23-10-2018

In today’s musical culture, the word “authenticity” has pretty much lost all meaning. What used to represent something bona fide and true is now just watered-down marketing speak, stamped onto press releases without a second thought.

Born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1983, JP Harris doesn’t fancy himself so much a musician as he does a carpenter who writes country songs. After finishing the eighth grade, he boarded a Greyhound in the middle of an early summer night, and scarcely looked back.

He traveled the country, often alone, hitchhiking and hopping freight trains while making his living as a farm laborer, shepherd, woodsman, and carpenter, among many other titles.

Still an in-demand carpenter to this day, Harris has been writing and performing country music for nearly a decade now, releasing his debut album, I’ll Keep Calling, in 2012. He followed that album with Home Is Where the Hurt Is in 2014, which only saw his star rise both among country fans and critics at major outlets like Rolling Stone. JP was also referenced by Eagles front man Don Henley in a 2015 interview with Hey Reverb as making “thoughtful, authentic music.”

With his new album Sometimes Dogs Bark at Nothing, he’s back after a four- year hiatus to remind folks what a lifetime dedicated to country music really looks and sounds like. Sure to please fans of his hardscrabble earlier work, this new release also finds the acclaimed songwriter and vocalist stretching himself musically and personally. It was one of the tougher albums Harris has put together, with a disappointing few false starts that would eventually yield a fruitful situation from which he could work.

“I feel like I was trying to make this record for two or three years before we actually got around to making it,” Harris says. “I had written at least half of the songs a couple years before we got close to a plan of how to make it. I really wanted to wait for the right situation to come up before I made this album. A lot of things changed in my life between when I made my previous album and when we decided to go into the studio last year to make this one. I felt like I had a very different approach to life and music in general. It was really important to wait for the right situation to coalesce before I dove into making something new.”

In addition to taking a little more time planning Sometimes Dogs Bark at Nothing, Harris also changed up his approach to recording. Working with producer (and Old Crow Medicine Show member) Morgan Jahnig, Harris tapped a handful of his favorite players, sent them acoustic demos of the album’s tracks, and gave some pretty specific instructions: “Take the next five days to think about these. Please write notes of whatever ideas come to mind. Please don’t talk to each other about it. Let’s all just get in the studio on day one and compare notes as we go.”

The resulting sessions had an air of spontaneity and a palpable creative energy, both of which lent themselves to an album that feels real, raw, and more akin to a live performance than anything Harris has put out thus far. “We took a counter-intuitive approach,” he says. “We had no pre-production. There were no rehearsals. We basically had a whole studio full of multi-instrumentalists, a six-piece band total, for the whole recording session. Everybody played at least two instruments. It was a really interesting way to do it and I think it helped us avoid anybody, including myself, overthinking the songs.”

In just about every way, Sometimes Dogs Bark at Nothing is a recorded manifestation of Harris’ growth over the last four years. He’s become more comfortable in his singing, more confident in his artistic direction, and more adventurous in his sonic palette. He’s letting listeners in to some of his most difficult struggles and turning a compassionate eye to the struggles of others.

And, after years of writing and playing, he’s more in love with country music than ever before. He sums up his hopes for the album simply: “I’m just hoping that me coming to the table without gimmicks or cool-looking clothes or boot cut jeans, just the dirt bag guy I am with a tank top and a pair of boots on, is enough to just get people into the music.”

We're happy to have JP Harris & The Tough Choices back in Europe this next month, most dates will be opened by Miss Tess:

02/11: Eindhoven (NL) @ Cafe Wilhelmina º
03/11: Amsterdam (NL) @ Q-Factory º
04/11: Breda (NL) @ ROOTZZ
05/11: Krefeld (DE) @ Kulturrampe º
07/11: London (UK) @ AMA UK Press Launch 
09/11: Shetland Islands (UK) @ Thomas Fraser Festival º
10/11: Shetland Islands (UK) @ Thomas Fraser Festival º
11/11: Aberdeen (UK) @ The Blue Lamp º
12/11: Newcastle (UK) @ The Cluny 2 º
13/11: Glasgow (UK) @ Holy Smokes º
14/11: Bristol (UK) @ Mothers Ruin º
15/11: Oxford (UK) @ Jericho Tavern º
16/11: London (UK) @ Omeara º
17/11: Bedford (UK) @ Ents Shed º
20/11: Utrecht (NL) @ TivoliVredenburg º
21/11: Biel (CH) @ The Ranch º
22/11: Mannheim (DE) @ Altes Volksbad º
23/11: Hamburg (DE) @ Nochtwache º
24/11: Altlandsberg (DE) @ The Buchholz Saloon º
25/11: Arnhem (NL) @ Luxor º

º w/ Miss Tess

Related artist: JP Harris back