SPARE A THOUGHT for Devin Tuel and Stephen Harms.
They are six albums into a self-funded, self-directed career as Native Harrow that has taken them from various parts of the USA to, again, for now, Philadelphia, via three years in the UK (where they acquired an album, Covid lockdowns stories, and expressions like “faffing about” and “taking the piss out of myself”) and their catalogue has just been augmented by the rich sounds and tunes of their new album, Divided Kind.
All good. Well, yes, but you see they make country soul, or maybe it’s better described as folk pop with some country roots, or possibly southern sounds meets west coast styles. After all, it’s got grooves and hooks, gets sensual and can chug along, there’s a definite sense of soil under foot and maybe an hour or two in church. And Tuel’s vocals bridge the gap between Memphis, Tulsa and Laurel Canyon while multi-instrumentalist Harms, shapes a mid-20th century modern sound.
What are you gonna call that? Dammit, for want of a better term maybe we have to make do with Americana. And no one really likes that term anymore.
This may seem somewhat academic, but hey, there’s nothing wrong with that when Native Harrow are described on their website as “scholars of music”. And that description is not a publicist’s fancy, as Harms explains.
“We both come from a classical arts background: my degrees are in classical double bass performing and conducting, and then a Masters in music theory and musicology, before I moved into a jazz realm; Devin was a ballerina for 16, 17 years,” he says.
“We realise there is this funny dichotomy in what we do where we are approaching a music career with a kind of a DIY/punk rock ethos – we just get in a van, it’s just us, we make the T-shirts ourselves, we make the vinyl ourselves, we sell them from the back of the van, we sleep in the van, we book the tours ourselves – and on the other side of it, we show up at these kind of rough-and-tumble Americana festivals, roots festivals, honky-tonk nights and we don’t quite fit in. Musically, artistically, aesthetically.”
Short of showing us their record collection, that may be the best or only way to explain themselves in a world where everyone is still expected to have the right scuffed boots and worked denim shirt to be considered “real” roots musicians, even if the closest they ever came to farm equipment was on a grade 5 school excursion.
Though Tuel adds the final element.
“We are also both in love with music and the arts and all we read a biographies of musicians or books about music. We love documentaries about music. Our whole life is about and dedicated to music, and I think our music comes more from we are constantly educating ourselves on our own art form,” she says. “We are proud of it I guess, that we love it so much and it defines who we are and has defined who we are for our whole lives.”
Much in the same way that it took a couple of decades for rock ‘n’ roll and pop to be seen as the kind of thing you could do well into adulthood and be taken seriously in doing so, the idea that you might study and be deeply immersed in the craft of the art, its history and weaponry if you will, has taken a long while to be accepted and respected and not be dismissed as being too studious or too esoteric, too holed up in the ivory tower of song.
“I think sometimes even among our peers we feel a little bit almost like bookish and that classical side of our training kinda comes out,” says Tuel. “We don’t necessarily fit in all the time in rooms of other musicians who are our friends. It’s how I felt in high school as well, as a dancer. You are doing something after school and not just going home and playing video games. I would go home and go to dance for six hours: that’s how I spent my weekends.
“It’s not that I was better than anybody; I was just living this different life and coming from a totally different angle. I think we approach our music and our band with that same mindset, where we come at it from that rigorous, classical, it’s your whole life [approach], making what is Native Harrow.”
For Harms, who takes primary responsibility for the production, there is in this deep immersion and knowledge mixed with something simpler in practice when it comes to an understanding of how important a defining sound – and a defining categorisation - can be for any band, but how such “clarity” is not the only route. Not surprisingly the academic/fan comes out.
“When you put say ‘70s Fleetwood Mac on, there is a defining sound that remains fairly constant no matter who is singing lead. The Beatles have a kind of similar thing. We are almost the opposite, and many acts are almost the opposite, but Devin’s vocals, the sound of her voice, the way that we record her voice, we have a pretty specific set up that we like,” he explains.
“We like to make sure the vocal is front and centre and loud, the way that a Frank Sinatra record would have been, or the way a jazz record would have been, or the way an Adele record is. We are pushing the music to the back and the sides, and keeping the vocal very front and centre and detailed.”
So there is a Native Harvest sound?
“We have somewhat of a sound but we are as much defined by what we don’t do in our sound as what we do,” says Harms. “The vocal right at the centre is such a big part of the sound and it allows the music to go in what seem like very different directions and different genres, because we are just serving the lyric.”
It’s true, their sound has more air in it than a lot of contemporary recordings, space left unfilled and, as Harms put it, things not done. These songs approach you almost from the side, rather than charging at you.
“I think we always want it to feel like it’s, not easy to digest but in a way that washes over you and isn’t sort of an attack,” says Tuel, explaining that part of that desire must come from the relative exposure that comes in the writing.
“I think when I’m writing songs, even when it is time to perform or record them – or especially when it’s time to record them – they are still so new to me and special and almost like the secret that I have that I’m now sharing … and I’m still feeling very vulnerable.”
If there is still some divide or question about whether you can be studious and passionate, knowledgeable, and natural, Native Harrow’s albums might show why the debate is a waste of time when you can be moved emotionally and physically.
“There are songwriters who are just pumping out songs, with a verse, a bridge, a chorus, and that’s that,” says Tuel. “I’m writing songs to hopefully communicate and connect something bigger.”
As a farewell, it’s worth reminding some of those who don the denim, affect the twang and call themselves roots artists that Harms grew up on a cattle farm. Yeah, a proper cowboy. With a couple of degrees. That’s real.
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